This works nice auto of the box in KDE to. Or for that matter any environment where you can set up a PDF printer and that would be just about all environments where you can run ghostscript.
But many non tech users doesn't associate PDF creation with printing. Having a separate PDF creation button increases the usability of OOo.
I thought Microsoft would have learned by now. FUD is not effective. Didn't they even mention this in their own documents.
Today there are a lot of CEOs that not yet have heard of OpenOffice.org or StarOffice. After reading this they will start asking themselves can I reduce my costs using OpenOffice.org intead of accepting the Microsoft Office suit as the only way to provide office functionality.
Microsoft may, or may not. be right that MS-Office is better. But what managers will ask is: Is OOo good enough?
Just like managers found IE good enough when compared to the costly but better Netscape.
So I suppose we have to thank Microsoft for their unintended free marketing of free software.
It is also very much about customer perception. If Microsoft have to pay a fine that is higher than what most companies could have afforded, they will realize that Microsoft is not sent by God, and will be much more aware of Microsoft strong arming tactics when and where they show up.
This could be much more costly to Microsoft than the fine itself. Especially now when Linux starts to emerge as a vialble alternative in many situations.
There are lot of people in the world that starve, have problems with diseaces, have have no education,..
All problems that could have used this money better Even if we find ET he is probably are just as dead as the dinosaurs when we get the information of his existence due to the distance the information have to travel.
But perhaps we should be happy that he is not using that money to fund SCO lawsuits.
My guess is that a PHB is more willing to switch applications as long as they still run in on windows, than to switch from windows to Linux.
So the most interesting thing for free software is not if windows apps are written in C#. The interesting thing is to port free Linux apps to windows, and so to speek invade the windows domain with free software.
That way windows users can get a first taste of what Linux can offer without leaving the confort of their familliar windows environment. It will also force propriatory software companies to compete against free software on the windows arena. Their chances of being succesful in that competition increases if they can offer cross platform solutions just like their free replacements.
If windows users start to use these free apps instead of closed source ones from venders like Microsoft. It will be much easier to switch OS from windows to Linux.
Nice to hear that windows have improved and that it now, at least in theory, is as good as Linux.
However, somtimes your installer tricks doesn't seam to work as it they are supposed to.
As an example: Last time I tried to upgrade java. I couldn't because it complained that some dll was allready installed. If I tried to remove java I couldn't because some dll was missing.
All ended with a complete reinstall of windows. and all programs and costed me about two days of work application configuration included.
Perhaps a windows expert would have done better but now we were talking about end users. I mean the kind that doesn't realize that a symbolic link could fix a the flash problem in Linux mentioned previously in this thread.
My problem with java is of course a bug in the installer that windows shouldn't be blamed for. But what we can blame windows for, is that simple things like this, that ought to be a simple to rectyfy manually is so hard to fix.
Similar problems exist in windows. It even common enough to get itself the nick name: DLL Hell.
The difference between DLL Hell in windows and the problems in Linux is that in Unix/Linux the shared libraries are verisoned. This means that you can use applications that requires different versions of the same lib in a way that is not possible in windows. Not only is the files versioned, there are also multiple places where you can put them and you can configure what libraries to use with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. So in my oppinion Linux is superior with respect to handling of shared libraries
However. I do think the Feodora team should have tested a commonly used application like the Flash plugin before shipping. The link should be set up automaitcally on install. Ordinary users should not have to fix things like this.
There may be some special issue in your setup. I can't remember that I had to do this when I tested Fedora. Even if I didn't find this bug, I found Fedora Core 1.0 very buggy and not near the same quality as e.g SuSE or Mandrake. I suggest that you report it as a bug to the Fedora team and switch to a distro of better quality.
Since Microsoft introduced software activation, it has bin harder for non technical persons to pirate windows
Could it be that Microsoft have discovered that the pirating done by home users did a good job in promoting their software as these users never would buy a full price copy anyway. But if they use it at home they would still be able to recommend it to friends and employers and help MS to help the MS-Office document file formats to being regarded as a defacto standard..
If they get MS-Office for free, Microsoft may think that these home users are less likely to use OpenOffice.org at home, only to discover that it is very compativle withe the MS-Office suite and largely offers the same value as their expensive package. And then they are less likely to show their boss, or install it at work perhpas preventing Microsft from selling other products such as Exchange and database servers.
Giving free software to employees companies and government agencies that have large Microsoft contracts is probably just the beginning.
In fact I would notbe surprised Microsoft to bundle CDs with Windows and Office with every computer magazine you buy. The sofware will be licenced for private use only.
The question is how long is it until eventually really happens. In late 2007 win2k will be end of lifed by Microsoft. So that could be the time for some. For people using win XP it could be even longer.
But by the end of 2007 we can expect that Linux is a very good aternative even on the desktop. Remember how the Linux desktop looked 3 years ago compare to how it look now, and imagine how it will look 3 year from now. My guess is that that spells trouble for Microsoft.
A Microsoft user from Utah, reports that he will file such law suits, He believes he has a very strong case. As he understands his licence entitles him to all derivative works of any Microsoft related product. According to his team of hired astrology specialists from MIT, he tells us he should be very confident in winning this case.
Not necessarily. Linux have long gained its good reputation more from sloppy programming at Microsoft where only features counted than from benefits of its own. In other words we think Linux is heavenly good just because the competiton sucks so much.
And I'm sure Microsft will continue in the same sloppy style. But now all of a sudden they have a competitor, so they must do something. It will probably be very hard to change the attitude regarding security among their employees. So they will have to do something more radical. That something will be TCPA, where the user is prevented from accessing his own hardware. This can create security at least in theory.
The problem is that Linux have no such theory, but relies on being well and securely implemented, and of the many eyes as you point out. And of cours we would not accept a theory that locked us out.
The question is if this is enough. In theory Linux there is very little difference between winNT4/win2k. Both windows and Linux have a Administrator/root that can do almost anything, and users that can have limited priviledges to various files in the system. In fact windows might even have had a small advantage (provided they had done their job) as all windows version from NT and up support ACLs. In the Linux world only some filesystem types support this. And ACLs is not a standard feature of Linux kernels before Linux 2.6.x, further more it is not backed by common GUIs like Gnome and KDE.
There is nothing that prevent buffer overflows or viruses in either of the systems. Even though I think there is some patch to help that on Linux but that is not part of the standard kernel and is generally not installed on the computer of Joe Linux user.
Luckyly there have bin few, if any, Linux viruses in the wild. But there is no theory that prevent them from spreading just like they do on windows. What's saving Linux today is that Linux users usually are better educated and do not run every executable file that is sent to them by some complete stranger. If the use of Linux was to become more common Linux could expect to have a fair share of such clueless users. To compete with windows TCPA security in the long run, Linux need more than the many eyes model. Some of it allready exeists in the Linux 2.6 kernel. I'm thinking of the SE linux extensions developed by NSA. The problem is that most applications doesn't support this fully, especially not GUI ones, and there are no simple to use administration tools that average unix admins can use without difficulty.
So, there is a lot to do with regards to Linux security. The many eyes may work well, but we probably need more in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if we have code signing facilities in Linux 2.8 or 3.0 and hopefully they will not lock us out of our computers.
Another area where Linux and open source need to improve security is in the systems for handling code. There have bin too many cases where open sorce sites have bin compromized. People must be able to trust that what they download and compile on their systems really is what the developer intended it to be.It must be possible to trace every single line of code back to to who wrote it. This would also be a good protection against IP problems like the current SCO hazzle.
There is nothing that is so good that it can't get better.
If we should believe the Forbes article, signing the licence would be just as bad as paying for. If it i s signed SCO could use that to show that other companies respect SCO rights to Linux.
If it works this way, we could expect that SCO have given away their "we do not sue you, until we can figure out how" - insurance to a lot of companies and will have a lot of acceptance track record to show up in court. But lets hope they are too greedy to do that.
And by now it would be hard to pull this trick, as so far it has bin SCO customers that have bin dragged to court. People and companies using Linux without any SCO involvment seams to be at low risk.
Doing business with SCO could also trigger actions e.g. boycotts and lawsuits from the open source movement. They could expect denial of service attacs either from misled angry wannebe members of the open source community (hope it never happens) or instigated by the SCO/Microsoft combo trying to discredit the open source movement. In this war everything seams to be permitted. And the best way to stay out of it seams to be to avoid SCO at all costs.
By the way look at the SCO stock! Now below $11! It seams that investors too, have lost faith in SCO. Time for a new hidden infusion from Microsoft?
The first windows version I used was NT4. It gave me a lot of functionality and it was certainly worth $45.
Then came along win2k. It gave me nothing new that I couldn't do with NT4. Well, perhaps there was some small innovation but it was absolutely nothing I could make use of to make any extra money.
Win2k did the same old things that was possible in NT4 only slightly different. That meant there was education costs involved. New boxes also had to be integrated into existing networks applications needed to be tested etc. Sometime there even was some loss of productivity until people got used to the new system. All this was far more expensive than $45. Yet there was no benefits to my business.
The same story goes for windows XP. It does the same thing for me as NT4, but it creates a lot of hazzle and costs in the upgrade process.
Of course I have the option of not upgrading, but in the case of NT4 we have a end of life situation where the OS is no longer supported with security patches etc.Installing NT4 on new boxes would also create costs as they normally already would have windows XP preinstalled. There would also be problems with new applications needed to conduct my business.
All in all, I very much doubt that it is possible to get any return of investment on upgrades of windows NT4 to win2k or XP in most companies. It is just a tax we have to pay because of the end of life thing.
Yes, KDE can be adjusted to look or act almost any way you want. But the problem is that the defaults are badly chosen. Good defaults are everything for usability.
E.g. the single click activation in KDE is very hard to handle to most people. Even Microsoft have tried it in their Active Desktop. Almost all users turned it off almost emmediately. I think the reason is that it somewhat breaks the desktop methaphore.
On a normal desktop you can pick things up for inspection and manipulaiton. Having single click for activation gives the user no easy way to do this.
The one click thing works well on the web as it is clear that it is a reference to another just like there is little inspection involved in turning the pages in a book.
Not that I would like to deprive any long time user of the possibility of single click activation, but it should really not be the default.
For your information, both Gnome and KDE are moving away from bitmaps right now, not 2007. And if you are talking about database driven file systems even Gnome people make experiments with that.See: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/feat ures.html
I would be surprised if there was many new things in Longhorn when it finally gets released. Not so much because Microsoft hasn't the technical knowhow to produce something new, but if Microsoft alters their GUI too much existing windows users will not feel at home.
A too big change would be bad for marketing. If you are going to learn a new way of working you can just as well learn something that is free. It will be minor innovations like multiple desktops (known to the rest of the world since about 1990)
In fact I'm not even sure there will be a Longhorn. It sort of looks more and more like Pink and other pre MacOS X Apple OS attempts. It gets more and more delayed and filled with features that nobody really wants.
Instead I guess Microsoft will shift their focus of development to MS-Office and try to tie it more to the server side where Microsoft is not doing so well at the moment.
This new spatial apperance of the new Nautilus reminds me of old MacOS finder. I liked it back then and I will probably like it in Nautilus. But I am a bit worried, some folder hierachies in Unix is quite deep.
Perhaps they should introduce something like the Mac spring loaded folders.I.e. if you want to move a file down in the hierachy you just drag and hold it over a folder, after a short while the window opens, and you hold the file over a folder in that window, until that opens and so on. When you finally reach the right folder you drop the file, and all windows you encountered on the way is closed automatically.
How do we know that this information was not left there intentionally in the hope of it to be found and that it would scare others into paying their extortion fee.
This way SCO can show that they contemplate sueing large organizations like BA without even filing a lawsuit.
Yes, but they will also have to point out what lines in their own source jfs, numa and rcu was derived from. The code being in AIX or Dynix is not enough.
I think we will see a press release from SCO declaring the ruling a great victory. After all IBM is eventually going to show SCO some code. Never mind that SCO will have to show theirs too. Then the stock will go up somewhat, perhaps somewhere around $12.50.
The stock scam doesn't seam to work as well as it used to in the old days when a press release from Darl could make it jump through the roof. Not even the AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler lawsuits deliberately presented together with the latest SCO fincial report could prevent the stock to end up in free fall.
So AutoZone broke the EUALA of UnixWare and put some binaray UnixWare.so files into some other OS (that happened to be Linux) without permission from SCO. If they had used a Linux only solution they would have bin fine.
Well, if this is the case, I hate to admit that I really think SCO should be compensated. After all if you have an agrement both parties are supposed to honer it. Just like SCO are supposed to honer GPL for their contributions to Linux.
This just shows that you should not under any circumstances do business with SCO.
I don't think the SCO vs IBM case have much to do with this. The only copyright stuff in that case is about IBM continued to distribute AIX after SCO revoked their licence. The rest is breach of contract stuff, and unless the end user isn't a SCO customer there would be no such things for SCO to sue over. So once again the lesson to learn, don't do business with SCO.
The Novell case is much more interesting here as it deals with wether SCO really have any copyrights to Linux.
The thing is, that non free software may have a problem competing with free software licences like the GPL. If we look at the software market as an ecosystem we find that GPLed software can assimilate new traits as it goes along. Actually not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. Even though such comparison gives you sort of negative vibes, it is non the less a good comparison.
Assume that you were going to write a new non free Office sutie. Then you would have to compete with the market leading MS-Office. To do that you would have to make your product better than MS-Office. Such a product would cost you a lot develop.
You would also have to compete with the free OpenOffice.org and as OpenOffice.org only gives slightly less user value than MS-Office but is available to the for free as in bear. None of your customers would buy your closed source office suite unless it wasn't better than OpenOffice.org. But your cost of developing it would be almost as high as writing a developing a better than MS-Office closed source program.
So evidently the only ways to make a better office suite is to have enough financing to produce a better program, or to make addons for OpenOffice to make it better.
It is not very probable that you will manage to get the financing to create a better suit from scratch and even if you did interests on loans etc would reduce your profitability for a very long time.
On the other hand if you make add ons to OpenOffice.org you jump start your development and it will probably be a lot easier to find sombody willing to finance your project as it is easier to see the end of it. Usually it would be some company that need the extra features that will pay for your development effort. Apart from such payments you will have a chance of getting support contracts as you now constitutes the edge in OpenOffice technology. So that would fix the dinner on your table. The price you pay is that the you have to make your software free as in speach.
Apart from fixing the dinner on your table it also have raised the value of OpenOffice.org. This means that the next contributer can jumpstart his efforts from a slightly higher level. This makes the choise to use open souce rather than starting all over even easier.This is very similar to how the academic world works, and you see few university teachers and researchers working without a paycheck.
At some point the free solution will be just as good as the leading closed source product. This will mean that the closed source vender will have to lower his prices to get anything sold. But to manouver into a position where his product has the technical edge. This takes development. But now his margins are lower he will have to get that development cheaper. In the end he will find some programmer that is willing to do the work for a bowl of rice. But as he have to have a sales organization he will still not be able to compete.
The closed source developer can only live in a world where software is scarse. And the goal of the open software developer is to make software less scarse. You could see each closed software package vender as a hunter for software users (the prey). While the open source developer is more like a farmer that harvest from from his planted free software seeds in the form of support and add on services. This is simple for him to do as the cost of the seeds is relatively low. as he have had a lot of help developing them.
In fact this model works well even if your seed costs quite a lot. Just look at the mobile phone market. Many service providers are quite willing to give you a phone for free that cost a lot to develop provided you promise to use their service for a given amount of time. The importent thing to these companies is to have large user base and they get it by making the price of entering into their world of services low. And this is exactly what free software does.
Just as the stoneage society of hunters was transformed into farmers to sutstain larger populations, closed source com
Setting up a printer in win2k would probably be a too hard task for aunt Tillie as well. And when installing a windows driver, we have no way of knowing what other things it may destroy..This is no excuse for open source software though. In fact it is even less excuse for open sorce software than it is for Microsoft. After all we have the code free for all of us to improve.
What's needed is some kind of autoconfiguration tool where printers and other stuff presents themselves on the network so it can be picked up and autoconfigured on the computers that needs them. Didn't Apple opensource something called Rendevoz,that do things like that, a while ago.
If they tries to sneak backdoors into the Linux kernel, we can safely assume that they will try to sneak in backdoors into other OSes as well.
There is the rumor of the NSAkey file in Windows being an example of such things.
The difference is that in Open source OSes like Linux the code will be scrutinized by other security agencys, by independent security experts and kernel developers. So I would say that their chanses of sneaking something malign into the Linux kernelis much less than doing so on other OSes.
Slashdot Mirror
This works nice auto of the box in KDE to. Or for that matter any environment where you can set up a PDF printer and that would be just about all environments where you can run ghostscript.
But many non tech users doesn't associate PDF creation with printing. Having a separate PDF creation button increases the usability of OOo.
I thought Microsoft would have learned by now.
FUD is not effective. Didn't they even mention this in their own documents.
Today there are a lot of CEOs that not yet have heard of OpenOffice.org or StarOffice. After reading this they will start asking themselves can I reduce my costs using OpenOffice.org intead of accepting the Microsoft Office suit as the only way to provide office functionality.
Microsoft may, or may not. be right that MS-Office is better. But what managers will ask is: Is OOo good enough?
Just like managers found IE good enough when compared to the costly but better Netscape.
So I suppose we have to thank Microsoft for their unintended free marketing of free software.
It's not only about the cash for the fine.
It is also very much about customer perception. If Microsoft have to pay a fine that is higher than what most companies could have afforded, they will realize that Microsoft is not sent by God, and will be much more aware of Microsoft strong arming tactics when and where they show up.
This could be much more costly to Microsoft than the fine itself. Especially now when Linux starts to emerge as a vialble alternative in many situations.
There are lot of people in the world that starve, have problems with diseaces, have have no education,..
All problems that could have used this money better Even if we find ET he is probably are just as dead as the dinosaurs when we get the information of his existence due to the distance the information have to travel.
But perhaps we should be happy that he is not using that money to fund SCO lawsuits.
My guess is that a PHB is more willing to switch applications as long as they still run in on windows, than to switch from windows to Linux.
So the most interesting thing for free software is not if windows apps are written in C#. The interesting thing is to port free Linux apps to windows, and so to speek invade the windows domain with free software.
That way windows users can get a first taste of what Linux can offer without leaving the confort of their familliar windows environment. It will also force propriatory software companies to compete against free software on the windows arena. Their chances of being succesful in that competition increases if they can offer cross platform solutions just like their free replacements.
If windows users start to use these free apps instead of closed source ones from venders like Microsoft. It will be much easier to switch OS from windows to Linux.
Nice to hear that windows have improved and that it now, at least in theory, is as good as Linux.
However, somtimes your installer tricks doesn't seam to work as it they are supposed to.
As an example: Last time I tried to upgrade java. I couldn't because it complained that some dll was allready installed. If I tried to remove java I couldn't because some dll was missing.
All ended with a complete reinstall of windows.
and all programs and costed me about two days of work application configuration included.
Perhaps a windows expert would have done better but now we were talking about end users.
I mean the kind that doesn't realize that a symbolic link could fix a the flash problem in Linux mentioned previously in this thread.
My problem with java is of course a bug in the installer that windows shouldn't be blamed for.
But what we can blame windows for, is that simple things like this, that ought to be a simple to rectyfy manually is so hard to fix.
Similar problems exist in windows. It even common enough to get itself the nick name: DLL Hell.
The difference between DLL Hell in windows and the problems in Linux is that in Unix/Linux the shared libraries are verisoned. This means that you can use applications that requires different versions of the same lib in a way that is not possible in windows. Not only is the files versioned, there are also multiple places where you can put them and you can configure what libraries to use with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. So in my oppinion Linux is superior with respect to handling of shared libraries
However. I do think the Feodora team should have tested a commonly used application like the Flash plugin before shipping. The link should be set up automaitcally on install. Ordinary users should not have to fix things like this.
There may be some special issue in your setup. I can't remember that I had to do this when I tested Fedora. Even if I didn't find this bug, I found Fedora Core 1.0 very buggy and not near the same quality as e.g SuSE or Mandrake. I suggest that you report it as a bug to the Fedora team and switch to a distro of better quality.
Since Microsoft introduced software activation, it has bin harder for non technical persons to pirate windows
Could it be that Microsoft have discovered that the pirating done by home users did a good job in promoting their software as these users never would buy a full price copy anyway. But if they use it at home they would still be able to recommend it to friends and employers and help MS to help the MS-Office document file formats to being regarded as a defacto standard..
If they get MS-Office for free, Microsoft may think that these home users are less likely to use OpenOffice.org at home, only to discover that it is very compativle withe the MS-Office suite and largely offers the same value as their expensive package. And then they are less likely to show their boss, or install it at work perhpas preventing Microsft from selling other products such as Exchange and database servers.
Giving free software to employees companies and government agencies that have large Microsoft contracts is probably just the beginning.
In fact I would notbe surprised Microsoft to bundle CDs with Windows and Office with every computer magazine you buy. The sofware will be licenced for private use only.
The question is how long is it until eventually really happens. In late 2007 win2k will be end of lifed by Microsoft. So that could be the time for some. For people using win XP it could be even longer.
But by the end of 2007 we can expect that Linux is a very good aternative even on the desktop. Remember how the Linux desktop looked 3 years ago compare to how it look now, and imagine how it will look 3 year from now. My guess is that that spells trouble for Microsoft.
In other news:
A Microsoft user from Utah, reports that he will file such law suits, He believes he has a very strong case. As he understands his licence entitles him to all derivative works of any Microsoft related product. According to his team of hired astrology specialists from MIT, he tells us he should be very confident in winning this case.
Not necessarily. Linux have long gained its good reputation more from sloppy programming at Microsoft where only features counted than from benefits of its own. In other words we think Linux is heavenly good just because the competiton sucks so much.
And I'm sure Microsft will continue in the same sloppy style. But now all of a sudden they have a competitor, so they must do something. It will probably be very hard to change the attitude regarding security among their employees. So they will have to do something more radical.
That something will be TCPA, where the user is prevented from accessing his own hardware. This can create security at least in theory.
The problem is that Linux have no such theory, but relies on being well and securely implemented, and of the many eyes as you point out. And of cours we would not accept a theory that locked us out.
The question is if this is enough. In theory Linux there is very little difference between winNT4/win2k. Both windows and Linux have a Administrator/root that can do almost anything, and users that can have limited priviledges to various files in the system. In fact windows might even have had a small advantage (provided they had done their job) as all windows version from NT and up support ACLs. In the Linux world only some filesystem types support this. And ACLs is not a standard feature of Linux kernels before Linux 2.6.x, further more it is not backed by common GUIs like Gnome and KDE.
There is nothing that prevent buffer overflows or viruses in either of the systems. Even though I think there is some patch to help that on Linux but that is not part of the standard kernel and is generally not installed on the computer of Joe Linux user.
Luckyly there have bin few, if any, Linux viruses in the wild. But there is no theory that prevent them from spreading just like they do on windows.
What's saving Linux today is that Linux users usually are better educated and do not run every executable file that is sent to them by some complete stranger. If the use of Linux was to become more common Linux could expect to have a fair share of such clueless users.
To compete with windows TCPA security in the long run, Linux need more than the many eyes model. Some of it allready exeists in the Linux 2.6 kernel. I'm thinking of the SE linux extensions developed by NSA. The problem is that most applications doesn't support this fully, especially not GUI ones, and there are no simple to use administration tools that average unix admins can use without difficulty.
So, there is a lot to do with regards to Linux security. The many eyes may work well, but we probably need more in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if we have code signing facilities in Linux 2.8 or 3.0 and hopefully they will not lock us out of our computers.
Another area where Linux and open source need to improve security is in the systems for handling code. There have bin too many cases where open sorce sites have bin compromized. People must be able to trust that what they download and compile on their systems really is what the developer intended it to be.It must be possible to trace every single line of code back to to who wrote it.
This would also be a good protection against IP problems like the current SCO hazzle.
There is nothing that is so good that it can't get better.
If we should believe the Forbes article, signing the licence would be just as bad as paying for. If it i s signed SCO could use that to show that other companies respect SCO rights to Linux.
If it works this way, we could expect that SCO have given away their "we do not sue you, until we can figure out how" - insurance to a lot of companies and will have a lot of acceptance track record to show up in court. But lets hope they are too greedy to do that.
And by now it would be hard to pull this trick, as so far it has bin SCO customers that have bin dragged to court. People and companies using Linux without any SCO involvment seams to be at low risk.
Doing business with SCO could also trigger actions e.g. boycotts and lawsuits from the open source movement. They could expect denial of service attacs either from misled angry wannebe members of the open source community (hope it never happens) or instigated by the SCO/Microsoft combo trying to discredit the open source movement. In this war everything seams to be permitted. And the best way to stay out of it seams to be to avoid SCO at all costs.
By the way look at the SCO stock! Now below $11!
It seams that investors too, have lost faith in SCO. Time for a new hidden infusion from Microsoft?
The first windows version I used was NT4. It gave me a lot of functionality and it was certainly worth $45.
Then came along win2k. It gave me nothing new that I couldn't do with NT4. Well, perhaps there was some small innovation but it was absolutely nothing I could make use of to make any extra money.
Win2k did the same old things that was possible in NT4 only slightly different. That meant there was education costs involved. New boxes also had to be integrated into existing networks applications needed to be tested etc. Sometime there even was some loss of productivity until people got used to the new system. All this was far more expensive than $45. Yet there was no benefits to my business.
The same story goes for windows XP. It does the same thing for me as NT4, but it creates a lot of hazzle and costs in the upgrade process.
Of course I have the option of not upgrading, but in the case of NT4 we have a end of life situation where the OS is no longer supported with security patches etc.Installing NT4 on new boxes would also create costs as they normally already would have windows XP preinstalled. There would also be problems with new applications needed to conduct my business.
All in all, I very much doubt that it is possible to get any return of investment on upgrades of windows NT4 to win2k or XP in most companies.
It is just a tax we have to pay because of the end of life thing.
Bodyguards will not protect him from being hit by falling stock prices.
Yes, KDE can be adjusted to look or act almost any way you want. But the problem is that the defaults are badly chosen. Good defaults are everything for usability.
E.g. the single click activation in KDE is very hard to handle to most people. Even Microsoft have tried it in their Active Desktop. Almost all users turned it off almost emmediately. I think the reason is that it somewhat breaks the desktop methaphore.
On a normal desktop you can pick things up for inspection and manipulaiton. Having single click for activation gives the user no easy way to do this.
The one click thing works well on the web as it is clear that it is a reference to another just like there is little inspection involved in turning the pages in a book.
Not that I would like to deprive any long time user of the possibility of single click activation, but it should really not be the default.
For your information, both Gnome and KDE are moving away from bitmaps right now, not 2007. And if you are talking about database driven file systems even Gnome people make experiments with that.See:t ures.html
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/fea
I would be surprised if there was many new things in Longhorn when it finally gets released. Not so much because Microsoft hasn't the technical knowhow to produce something new, but if Microsoft alters their GUI too much existing windows users will not feel at home.
A too big change would be bad for marketing. If you are going to learn a new way of working you can just as well learn something that is free.
It will be minor innovations like multiple desktops (known to the rest of the world since about 1990)
In fact I'm not even sure there will be a Longhorn. It sort of looks more and more like Pink and other pre MacOS X Apple OS attempts. It gets more and more delayed and filled with features that nobody really wants.
Instead I guess Microsoft will shift their focus of development to MS-Office and try to tie it more to the server side where Microsoft is not doing so well at the moment.
This new spatial apperance of the new Nautilus reminds me of old MacOS finder. I liked it back then and I will probably like it in Nautilus.
But I am a bit worried, some folder hierachies in Unix is quite deep.
Perhaps they should introduce something like the Mac spring loaded folders.I.e. if you want to move a file down in the hierachy you just drag and hold it over a folder, after a short while the window opens, and you hold the file over a folder in that window, until that opens and so on. When you finally reach the right folder you drop the file, and all windows you encountered on the way is closed automatically.
How do we know that this information was not left there intentionally in the hope of it to be found and that it would scare others into paying their extortion fee.
This way SCO can show that they contemplate sueing large organizations like BA without even filing a lawsuit.
Yes, but they will also have to point out what lines in their own source jfs, numa and rcu was derived from. The code being in AIX or Dynix is not enough.
I think we will see a press release from SCO declaring the ruling a great victory. After all IBM is eventually going to show SCO some code. Never mind that SCO will have to show theirs too. Then the stock will go up somewhat, perhaps somewhere around $12.50.
The stock scam doesn't seam to work as well as it used to in the old days when a press release from Darl could make it jump through the roof. Not even the AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler lawsuits deliberately presented together with the latest SCO fincial report could prevent the stock to end up in free fall.
So AutoZone broke the EUALA of UnixWare and put some binaray UnixWare .so files into some other OS (that happened to be Linux) without permission from SCO. If they had used a Linux only solution they would have bin fine.
Well, if this is the case, I hate to admit that I really think SCO should be compensated. After all if you have an agrement both parties are supposed to honer it. Just like SCO are supposed to honer GPL for their contributions to Linux.
This just shows that you should not under any circumstances do business with SCO.
I don't think the SCO vs IBM case have much to do with this. The only copyright stuff in that case is about IBM continued to distribute AIX after SCO revoked their licence. The rest is breach of contract stuff, and unless the end user isn't a SCO customer there would be no such things for SCO to sue over. So once again the lesson to learn, don't do business with SCO.
The Novell case is much more interesting here as it deals with wether SCO really have any copyrights to Linux.
The thing is, that non free software may have a problem competing with free software licences like the GPL. If we look at the software market as an ecosystem we find that GPLed software can assimilate new traits as it goes along. Actually not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. Even though such comparison gives you sort of negative vibes, it is non the less a good comparison.
Assume that you were going to write a new non free Office sutie. Then you would have to compete with the market leading MS-Office. To do that you would have to make your product better than MS-Office. Such a product would cost you a lot develop.
You would also have to compete with the free OpenOffice.org and as OpenOffice.org only gives slightly less user value than MS-Office but is available to the for free as in bear. None of your customers would buy your closed source office suite unless it wasn't better than OpenOffice.org. But your cost of developing it would be almost as high as writing a developing a better than MS-Office closed source program.
So evidently the only ways to make a better office suite is to have enough financing to produce a better program, or to make addons for OpenOffice to make it better.
It is not very probable that you will manage to get the financing to create a better suit from scratch and even if you did interests on loans etc would reduce your profitability for a very long time.
On the other hand if you make add ons to OpenOffice.org you jump start your development and it will probably be a lot easier to find sombody willing to finance your project as it is easier to see the end of it. Usually it would be some company that need the extra features that will pay for your development effort. Apart from such payments you will have a chance of getting support contracts as you now constitutes the edge in OpenOffice technology. So that would fix the dinner on your table. The price you pay is that the you have to make your software free as in speach.
Apart from fixing the dinner on your table it also have raised the value of OpenOffice.org. This means that the next contributer can jumpstart his efforts from a slightly higher level. This makes the choise to use open souce rather than starting all over even easier.This is very similar to how the academic world works, and you see few university teachers and researchers working without a paycheck.
At some point the free solution will be just as good as the leading closed source product. This will mean that the closed source vender will have to lower his prices to get anything sold. But to manouver into a position where his product has the technical edge. This takes development. But now his margins are lower he will have to get that development cheaper. In the end he will find some programmer that is willing to do the work for a bowl of rice. But as he have to have a sales organization he will still not be able to compete.
The closed source developer can only live in a world where software is scarse. And the goal of the open software developer is to make software less scarse. You could see each closed software package vender as a hunter for software users (the prey). While the open source developer is more like a farmer that harvest from from his planted free software seeds in the form of support and add on services. This is simple for him to do as the cost of the seeds is relatively low. as he have had a lot of help developing them.
In fact this model works well even if your seed costs quite a lot. Just look at the mobile phone market. Many service providers are quite willing to give you a phone for free that cost a lot to develop provided you promise to use their service for a given amount of time. The importent thing to these companies is to have large user base and they get it by making the price of entering into their world of services low. And this is exactly what free software does.
Just as the stoneage society of hunters was transformed into farmers to sutstain larger populations, closed source com
Setting up a printer in win2k would probably be a too hard task for aunt Tillie as well. And when installing a windows driver, we have no way of knowing what other things it may destroy..This is no excuse for open source software though. In fact it is even less excuse for open sorce software than it is for Microsoft. After all we have the code free for all of us to improve.
What's needed is some kind of autoconfiguration tool where printers and other stuff presents themselves on the network so it can be picked up and autoconfigured on the computers that needs them. Didn't Apple opensource something called Rendevoz,that do things like that, a while ago.
If they tries to sneak backdoors into the Linux kernel, we can safely assume that they will try to sneak in backdoors into other OSes as well.
There is the rumor of the NSAkey file in Windows being an example of such things.
The difference is that in Open source OSes like Linux the code will be scrutinized by other security agencys, by independent security experts and kernel developers. So I would say that their chanses of sneaking something malign into the Linux kernelis much less than doing so on other OSes.