More to the point, the companies or organizations which make OS software their primary focus have an incentive to make software which *needs* support and/or service/training, etc. If your package was understandable to everyone, with good online help (1996 man pages don't cut it for most people), tutorials, good FAQs, etc., why would anyone pay you for support? *Most* people are only going to pay for what they need, nothing more.
Already used by mod points - sorry - but that hit the nail on the head perfectly. To go further, it would benefit society overall, even if it did hurt them and some other publishing houses. The greater good would be served though.
Frankly, the fact that there are less companies developing open products doesn't worry me, because it's much easier to start building a clone while you are small enough to fly under radar. It's only when the product is approaching a usable status that a company is needed for promotion, protection, etc. and it is then that they will spring up around the product.
So, you're saying there's less 'usable' stuff in the open source world? When something approaches usable, then companies will spring up? The opposite seems to be happening - more things are getting usable, and there are fewer companies springing up (and many folding).
Why would cutting a deal with AOL cause Sun to lose money? If Sun paid AOL money to distribute Java with every AOL disk and update every AOL member's JVM, AOL could actually make a bit of money from that. I'm completely mystified as to why suggesting Sun should get off their ass and make a real effort to get Java into end user's hands should *not* be done because AOL/TW lose money.
to have every AOL CD on the planet contain then-current JVMs which get installed with AOL. Sun could have AOL do incremental upgrades while people are chatting with AIM - they'd probably not notice a few K here and there being chewed up to bring new JVM upgrades. Everyone would have latest JVM. Java advocates would have *nothing* to complain about - if people didn't run Java apps it would be because they suck, not because of some evil ploy to keep Java out of the hands of people. MS manages to get people to upgrade whole operating systems - and they make it relatively painless. Sun can't seem to get a 20meg binary in people's hands, nor can they seem to make an installer system so I don't have to mess with command line crap to run a Java application. WebStart is half-assed, but it's a step in the right direction. Why don't they associate ".class" files with the java binary when it gets installed? This would make it so much easier to distribute apps - here, put this disc in and click 'myapp.class'. Nope - nothing's that simple with Sun, but they BITCH to high heaven about how bad MS is treating them. If they took half the money they spend on bitching and lawsuits and channeled it into getting Java into people's hands, making worthwhile *consumer* apps in Java, the Java mindshare would go through the roof.
Let's see:
Java was meant for TVs and coffee makers. Whoops, no, Java will replace the OS on clients. Whoops, no, sorry, "java applets suck" and all us Java advocates *really* meant that Java was really meant to run on the server all along.
Which 'whoops!' is going to come next? When Sun manages to lose whatever foothold they have in the server arena, we'll be hearing "yeah, well, servers suck - Java will *really* kill everyone in PDAs".
If I owned a house that I'd determined (through some of my own testing) had a chimney which was more like ly to allow breakins because the architect has designed too large a hole at the top, and I then tried to publish information about the security concerns about that chimney, could the architect bring suit to stop me? I'd like to notify other homeowners to secure their chimneys, but the architect is trying to get laws passed saying that *I* am the danger to society - I'm causing more breakins - because I'm talking about the chimney. Is that right? That seems to be the direction the big boys want to move in (not just MS, but many large software companies, from what I gather).
If the stuff is pulled from and stored to a relational DB, why not just use a language which is more suited to dealing with relational stuff? Zope seems to thrive on OOdb stuff, and the relational, while possible, is an 'oh yeah, that too' thing (again, talking appearances).
Yes, you should supply the links.:)
Comparing against Tomcat - at least earlier versions - is like shooting fish in a barrel. I'd be more interested to see it go against a BEA app, or a well-built PHP apps (not that many exist tho!):)
Give me stats please - I can never find anyone who gives actual numerical benchmarks on Zope/python in terms of capacity. Give hardware numbers and sample code and benchmark results for how well it held up. 'still good enough' performance just doesn't sound all that convincing. Everything I've seen about Zope points to 'oo' database as being the primary database. People needing to interface with standard relational databases seem to be SOL - how right/wrong is that?
'real OOP' - PHP is 'good enough' at OO for most projects (if 'good enough' is sufficient reason to use Zope, it's sufficient to argue for PHP too).
Zope *needs* to have better presentation - we've installed it a few times and it's always confusing as sin, with no good documentation.
Our own http://www.logicreate.com product is an example of a complex system which makes PHP development of large scale projects easier than you'd think, based on the tediousness of most online PHP tutorials.
Yes this is primarily a shameless plug, but rather than just saying 'PHP is not a toy' I figured I'd give an actual example.:)
Pretty easy to get around this though, because they claim it gives 'better protection'. It doesn't actually make the OS *better* or *safer* or *improve it* in any way. Having the code simply means Austria can know more about what's going on inside and potentially protect themselves against problems they can predict based on knowing the code.
Austria isn't 'improving the security and useability' of the OS because they have the code. MS is not being inconsistent here.
I must just be too US-centric. Nothing at conectiva.com in English about certification.
Conectiva develops a series of products and additional services directed to the attendance of the market demand that seeks to adopt Open Source Tools; including books, manuals, additional software like Linux Tools and embedded systems, OEM programs, applications port, training kits and the "Revista do Linux" (Linux magazine). In addition, the company provides consulting services, training and technical support in all Latin America through its own service centers and certified partners.
That's all I find - a mention. No links to 'how to get certified' or anything like that. It's a pretty bland site - at least the English version.
SUSE - again, if they've got it, they hide it well.
Show me Caldera's certification program. Show me Mandrake's certification program. I won't even bother with the other two. Caldera's certification is primarily around certifying that your apps and hardware work with their software. The 'education' part is pitched as standard linux admin stuff, nothing specific to caldera. Hardly inspiring, but in 2002, would someone spend money on Caldera-specific training? Probably not.
You wouldn't earn goodwill - you'd earn scorn from people because you'd be seen as a leech. No doubt in my mind about it. And it wouldn't really be 'debian' if you included any 'non free' stuff, which you'd have to do to make something commercially viable.
I read about this last night, and had mixed feelings. It's certainly overdue in the market - there definitely needs to be simpler 'cross-distribution' compatibility for installing packages. Yes compiling from source is generally compatible, but not everyone wants to do that, nor should they have to. It's a waste of someone's time to do that in many cases.
I think it may be too little, too late, however. This should have been done over a year ago, and there still seems to be too little information on the specifics of the deal(s). Figure it'll take *months* before this has any impact on the installed base out there, it'll be a miracle if this actually 'saves' any of these distros from further marginalization.
Someone else mentioned Redhat feeds into an 'illusion' that businesses want - 'shiny support', etc. It's no illusion. It may cost money, but damn it - if someone in a business needs support for something (driver doesn't work, upgrade broke, whatever) having a *real person* to call who's been trained on that particular distro is invaluable. Yes, it may cost $200. Yes, you 1337 geeks out there could hang around in IRC for a few hours waiting to get an answer. *Businesses* can't afford to do that. Furthermore, they shouldn't have to put up with those channels of support (not reliable enough - quality of support is hit and miss, and they can't afford to wait for the 'hit' all the time). Whether or not they ever need it ('linux is so stable!') the fact that it's there is more than comfort enough to persuade people to go the Redhat route.
Furthermore, the Redhat certification and training and all the other secondary services simply help to bolster their lead in the mindshare of the business market. Maybe it's just that they had more cash to play with after their IPO - if so, they've put it to good use.
We'll be combining our regular PHP user group meeting with a Mozilla-release party on June 6 (hopefully that's close enough one way or the other). Food/drinks provided. http://www.tapinternet.com/ for contact info.
Oh well, my life will get back on track when millions of these managers realize that millions of these bootcamp MCSE's are worthless, and I get a million job offers.
That won't happen though. What will happen is those MCSEs will get larger budgets to buy more firewalls, software with pretty interfaces and other 'necessities' to prevent h4>0r5 like j00 from getting in. It's all in the attitude, really, and I don't think too many MCSEs will lose their jobs even if their networks get compromised. "Hey, these hackers are *tough*! They beat all our best trained people. Better spend more money on hardware and training!". That's what'll happen. Obviously not all MCSEs are horrible, but there are too many people with certifications from MS which shouldn't really have them (really, too many people with certifications period who shouldn't have them) but as long as certification is an industry, the certifications themselves will carry less meaning than they otherwise should.
No, I don't think it's $75/5 seats. It's $75 which you can install in up to 5 locations, as long as only one is being used at any one time. It's meant so that I can pay $75 and install it at home and at work at the same time.
Perhaps my definition of seats is wrong. If I have 10 employees in an office and I want them all to be using StarWriter 6 during the work day, I need to buy 10 licenses, not 2.
There is no usable contact management software under Linux, for starters. Photo editing as well is a bit poor - GIMP is the best available that I'm aware of, and it doesn't support kerning.
If there *is* something decent contact management-wise out there *now*, there wasn't a year ago, when it was needed. We can't sit around for months waiting for something to get done (or started in some cases).
Perhaps you could post what you do under Linux what Windows people think it can't do, or more to the point, regular day to day business stuff people use Windows for that you have equivalents for under Linux.
Part of this is a 'free' issue - there's no good Quickbooks equivalent, for example. I think there's something called 'myapp', but it's a pay for product. Nothing against them, and we may get it at some point, but there was already a windows copy of quickbooks in use. Why throw it away at this point? That's not the *only* thing holding us back from 100% Lunix, so it makes no sense to get rid of that yet.
There are some other issues as well, but they're specific to debian. Primarily, there was a habit of doing 'apt-get upgrade' all the time against 'unstable' which occasionally made the system, well, unstable. But that's nothing specific to do with available software.
My understanding is that it's a completely separate database system included - and the name escapes me. It was/is a licensed product, which is part of the reason why it's not 'open' like the rest of the suite. I'm not sure how easy it would be to connect it to use an external database instead of the internal one. I suspect not easy at all, otherwise that may have been an OpenOffice.org project as well.
Night and day difference. *Definitely* worth the download for openoffice - especially if you actually thought 5.2 was OK. I hated it - slow and ugly interface. The OO (and SO6 beta I used) were quite nice. Not perfect, but *quite* usable for most situations.
I wasn't suggesting that you were in particular, but I've known a couple debian people who've gone off on that 'only free stuff' mindset. One debian guy (wasn't *quite* that stringent) works in my office. It took awhile in the 'real world' of computer use (something more than C development) for him to realize that you simply can't survive like that. He's using an XP laptop now.:)
I realized after I sent the last one that it may have looked like I accused you of saying something you weren't saying. Sorry.
Beware that if you want to be productive in an 'office suite' sense (exchanging documents with others, etc), not in a 'I write C code all day' sense, you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.
This seems to happen everytime there's a story about openoffice.org or staroffice. Here's a list of the major points:
1. StarOffice 6 is released and costs $75.95/seat. 2. StarOffice 6 and OpenOffice.org are built from the same codebase 3. StarOffice 6 includes niceties and extras that OpenOffice.org doesn't include (many templates, nice clipart, a manual, and a database component)
If you need to do basic stuff, OpenOffice.org will be just fine. If you want to a database tool to go along with your office suite, you'd need StarOffice 6.
They are paranoid about giving access to those who really need it, while ignoring much of the easier ways people can break in (such as proper use of passwords, account maintenance and monitoring, etc..).
*Many* places I've worked at or worked with had this attitude. Requesting access to data or (heaven forbid) a physical room with computers in it might take days to get approved, but people'd still have their passwords on yellow sticky notes. I used to think it was specific to one company, then noticed it other places. I then thought perhaps it was specific to a certain *type* of company. I can't see much rhyme nor reason - seems to be just about everywhere there's usually a minority of people who are both concerned about all facets of security and can implement the correct steps without alienating the people around them.
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More to the point, the companies or organizations which make OS software their primary focus have an incentive to make software which *needs* support and/or service/training, etc. If your package was understandable to everyone, with good online help (1996 man pages don't cut it for most people), tutorials, good FAQs, etc., why would anyone pay you for support? *Most* people are only going to pay for what they need, nothing more.
Already used by mod points - sorry - but that hit the nail on the head perfectly. To go further, it would benefit society overall, even if it did hurt them and some other publishing houses. The greater good would be served though.
Frankly, the fact that there are less companies developing open products doesn't worry me, because it's much easier to start building a clone while you are small enough to fly under radar. It's only when the product is approaching a usable status that a company is needed for promotion, protection, etc. and it is then that they will spring up around the product.
So, you're saying there's less 'usable' stuff in the open source world? When something approaches usable, then companies will spring up? The opposite seems to be happening - more things are getting usable, and there are fewer companies springing up (and many folding).
Why would cutting a deal with AOL cause Sun to lose money? If Sun paid AOL money to distribute Java with every AOL disk and update every AOL member's JVM, AOL could actually make a bit of money from that. I'm completely mystified as to why suggesting Sun should get off their ass and make a real effort to get Java into end user's hands should *not* be done because AOL/TW lose money.
to have every AOL CD on the planet contain then-current JVMs which get installed with AOL. Sun could have AOL do incremental upgrades while people are chatting with AIM - they'd probably not notice a few K here and there being chewed up to bring new JVM upgrades. Everyone would have latest JVM. Java advocates would have *nothing* to complain about - if people didn't run Java apps it would be because they suck, not because of some evil ploy to keep Java out of the hands of people. MS manages to get people to upgrade whole operating systems - and they make it relatively painless. Sun can't seem to get a 20meg binary in people's hands, nor can they seem to make an installer system so I don't have to mess with command line crap to run a Java application. WebStart is half-assed, but it's a step in the right direction. Why don't they associate ".class" files with the java binary when it gets installed? This would make it so much easier to distribute apps - here, put this disc in and click 'myapp.class'. Nope - nothing's that simple with Sun, but they BITCH to high heaven about how bad MS is treating them. If they took half the money they spend on bitching and lawsuits and channeled it into getting Java into people's hands, making worthwhile *consumer* apps in Java, the Java mindshare would go through the roof.
Let's see:
Java was meant for TVs and coffee makers.
Whoops, no, Java will replace the OS on clients.
Whoops, no, sorry, "java applets suck" and all us Java advocates *really* meant that Java was really meant to run on the server all along.
Which 'whoops!' is going to come next? When Sun manages to lose whatever foothold they have in the server arena, we'll be hearing "yeah, well, servers suck - Java will *really* kill everyone in PDAs".
If I owned a house that I'd determined (through some of my own testing) had a chimney which was more like ly to allow breakins because the architect has designed too large a hole at the top, and I then tried to publish information about the security concerns about that chimney, could the architect bring suit to stop me? I'd like to notify other homeowners to secure their chimneys, but the architect is trying to get laws passed saying that *I* am the danger to society - I'm causing more breakins - because I'm talking about the chimney. Is that right? That seems to be the direction the big boys want to move in (not just MS, but many large software companies, from what I gather).
Not to press the issue too much but...
:)
:)
If the stuff is pulled from and stored to a relational DB, why not just use a language which is more suited to dealing with relational stuff? Zope seems to thrive on OOdb stuff, and the relational, while possible, is an 'oh yeah, that too' thing (again, talking appearances).
Yes, you should supply the links.
Comparing against Tomcat - at least earlier versions - is like shooting fish in a barrel. I'd be more interested to see it go against a BEA app, or a well-built PHP apps (not that many exist tho!)
Give me stats please - I can never find anyone who gives actual numerical benchmarks on Zope/python in terms of capacity. Give hardware numbers and sample code and benchmark results for how well it held up. 'still good enough' performance just doesn't sound all that convincing. Everything I've seen about Zope points to 'oo' database as being the primary database. People needing to interface with standard relational databases seem to be SOL - how right/wrong is that?
'real OOP' - PHP is 'good enough' at OO for most projects (if 'good enough' is sufficient reason to use Zope, it's sufficient to argue for PHP too).
Zope *needs* to have better presentation - we've installed it a few times and it's always confusing as sin, with no good documentation.
Our own http://www.logicreate.com product is an example of a complex system which makes PHP development of large scale projects easier than you'd think, based on the tediousness of most online PHP tutorials.
:)
Yes this is primarily a shameless plug, but rather than just saying 'PHP is not a toy' I figured I'd give an actual example.
Pretty easy to get around this though, because they claim it gives 'better protection'. It doesn't actually make the OS *better* or *safer* or *improve it* in any way. Having the code simply means Austria can know more about what's going on inside and potentially protect themselves against problems they can predict based on knowing the code.
Austria isn't 'improving the security and useability' of the OS because they have the code. MS is not being inconsistent here.
I must just be too US-centric. Nothing at conectiva.com in English about certification.
Conectiva develops a series of products and additional services directed to the attendance of the market demand that seeks to adopt Open Source Tools; including books, manuals, additional software like Linux Tools and embedded systems, OEM programs, applications port, training kits and the "Revista do Linux" (Linux magazine). In addition, the company provides consulting services, training and technical support in all Latin America through its own service centers and certified partners.
That's all I find - a mention. No links to 'how to get certified' or anything like that. It's a pretty bland site - at least the English version.
SUSE - again, if they've got it, they hide it well.
Show me Caldera's certification program. Show me Mandrake's certification program. I won't even bother with the other two. Caldera's certification is primarily around certifying that your apps and hardware work with their software. The 'education' part is pitched as standard linux admin stuff, nothing specific to caldera. Hardly inspiring, but in 2002, would someone spend money on Caldera-specific training? Probably not.
You wouldn't earn goodwill - you'd earn scorn from people because you'd be seen as a leech. No doubt in my mind about it. And it wouldn't really be 'debian' if you included any 'non free' stuff, which you'd have to do to make something commercially viable.
I read about this last night, and had mixed feelings. It's certainly overdue in the market - there definitely needs to be simpler 'cross-distribution' compatibility for installing packages. Yes compiling from source is generally compatible, but not everyone wants to do that, nor should they have to. It's a waste of someone's time to do that in many cases.
I think it may be too little, too late, however. This should have been done over a year ago, and there still seems to be too little information on the specifics of the deal(s). Figure it'll take *months* before this has any impact on the installed base out there, it'll be a miracle if this actually 'saves' any of these distros from further marginalization.
Someone else mentioned Redhat feeds into an 'illusion' that businesses want - 'shiny support', etc. It's no illusion. It may cost money, but damn it - if someone in a business needs support for something (driver doesn't work, upgrade broke, whatever) having a *real person* to call who's been trained on that particular distro is invaluable. Yes, it may cost $200. Yes, you 1337 geeks out there could hang around in IRC for a few hours waiting to get an answer. *Businesses* can't afford to do that. Furthermore, they shouldn't have to put up with those channels of support (not reliable enough - quality of support is hit and miss, and they can't afford to wait for the 'hit' all the time). Whether or not they ever need it ('linux is so stable!') the fact that it's there is more than comfort enough to persuade people to go the Redhat route.
Furthermore, the Redhat certification and training and all the other secondary services simply help to bolster their lead in the mindshare of the business market. Maybe it's just that they had more cash to play with after their IPO - if so, they've put it to good use.
We'll be combining our regular PHP user group meeting with a Mozilla-release party on June 6 (hopefully that's close enough one way or the other). Food/drinks provided. http://www.tapinternet.com/ for contact info.
Oh well, my life will get back on track when millions of these managers realize that millions of these bootcamp MCSE's are worthless, and I get a million job offers.
That won't happen though. What will happen is those MCSEs will get larger budgets to buy more firewalls, software with pretty interfaces and other 'necessities' to prevent h4>0r5 like j00 from getting in. It's all in the attitude, really, and I don't think too many MCSEs will lose their jobs even if their networks get compromised. "Hey, these hackers are *tough*! They beat all our best trained people. Better spend more money on hardware and training!". That's what'll happen. Obviously not all MCSEs are horrible, but there are too many people with certifications from MS which shouldn't really have them (really, too many people with certifications period who shouldn't have them) but as long as certification is an industry, the certifications themselves will carry less meaning than they otherwise should.
No, I don't think it's $75/5 seats. It's $75 which you can install in up to 5 locations, as long as only one is being used at any one time. It's meant so that I can pay $75 and install it at home and at work at the same time.
Perhaps my definition of seats is wrong. If I have 10 employees in an office and I want them all to be using StarWriter 6 during the work day, I need to buy 10 licenses, not 2.
There is no usable contact management software under Linux, for starters. Photo editing as well is a bit poor - GIMP is the best available that I'm aware of, and it doesn't support kerning.
If there *is* something decent contact management-wise out there *now*, there wasn't a year ago, when it was needed. We can't sit around for months waiting for something to get done (or started in some cases).
Perhaps you could post what you do under Linux what Windows people think it can't do, or more to the point, regular day to day business stuff people use Windows for that you have equivalents for under Linux.
Part of this is a 'free' issue - there's no good Quickbooks equivalent, for example. I think there's something called 'myapp', but it's a pay for product. Nothing against them, and we may get it at some point, but there was already a windows copy of quickbooks in use. Why throw it away at this point? That's not the *only* thing holding us back from 100% Lunix, so it makes no sense to get rid of that yet.
There are some other issues as well, but they're specific to debian. Primarily, there was a habit of doing 'apt-get upgrade' all the time against 'unstable' which occasionally made the system, well, unstable. But that's nothing specific to do with available software.
My understanding is that it's a completely separate database system included - and the name escapes me. It was/is a licensed product, which is part of the reason why it's not 'open' like the rest of the suite. I'm not sure how easy it would be to connect it to use an external database instead of the internal one. I suspect not easy at all, otherwise that may have been an OpenOffice.org project as well.
Night and day difference. *Definitely* worth the download for openoffice - especially if you actually thought 5.2 was OK. I hated it - slow and ugly interface. The OO (and SO6 beta I used) were quite nice. Not perfect, but *quite* usable for most situations.
I wasn't suggesting that you were in particular, but I've known a couple debian people who've gone off on that 'only free stuff' mindset. One debian guy (wasn't *quite* that stringent) works in my office. It took awhile in the 'real world' of computer use (something more than C development) for him to realize that you simply can't survive like that. He's using an XP laptop now. :)
I realized after I sent the last one that it may have looked like I accused you of saying something you weren't saying. Sorry.
Beware that if you want to be productive in an 'office suite' sense (exchanging documents with others, etc), not in a 'I write C code all day' sense, you might need to offend some GPL/FSF zealot's idea of how you should operate your computer.
This seems to happen everytime there's a story about openoffice.org or staroffice. Here's a list of the major points:
1. StarOffice 6 is released and costs $75.95/seat.
2. StarOffice 6 and OpenOffice.org are built from the same codebase
3. StarOffice 6 includes niceties and extras that OpenOffice.org doesn't include (many templates, nice clipart, a manual, and a database component)
If you need to do basic stuff, OpenOffice.org will be just fine. If you want to a database tool to go along with your office suite, you'd need StarOffice 6.
They are paranoid about giving access to those who really need it, while ignoring much of the easier ways people can break in (such as proper use of passwords, account maintenance and monitoring, etc..).
*Many* places I've worked at or worked with had this attitude. Requesting access to data or (heaven forbid) a physical room with computers in it might take days to get approved, but people'd still have their passwords on yellow sticky notes. I used to think it was specific to one company, then noticed it other places. I then thought perhaps it was specific to a certain *type* of company. I can't see much rhyme nor reason - seems to be just about everywhere there's usually a minority of people who are both concerned about all facets of security and can implement the correct steps without alienating the people around them.
You're probably right about #2, but it wouldn't be that hard to specify a minimum password length.