OSS team is much, much smaller than the closed source team and can't possibly replicate that anyway.
I would be surprised if there are more than half a dozen engineers in either AMD or NVidia working fulltime on Linux drivers. There are maybe two or xorg developers working somewhat fulltime on Radeon, so the difference in team sizes is not really gigantic. I would think that access to information and historical code base to draw from is more of an issue. However I do not agree with your "can't possibly" at all. It is just a matter of time.
Sorry, but ATI driver is still PISS POOR relative to nVidia. It seems that everytime I install ANY distribution (... well, Fedora, Ubuntu or SUSE,) nVidia Just Works (tm)(r) but with ATI I have to download some weird thing from ATI, and the stuff (almost) never work right.
Simply not true for current offerings. Both Radeon and NVidia proprietary drivers + install scripts are a pain, and both are better than they used to be. Both offerings are fast as hell, but if you want hassle free kernel upgrades, nothing comes close to the open source Radeon drivers.
I think the issue with the open source radeon drivers isn't that the developers don't know how to implement stuff, or that it's a closed API or whatever. The problem is one of manpower.
I am sure that's it. However it's wonderful that I'm able to develop complex OpenGL apps with a reasonable expectation that things will work. Things that don't work: no buffer objects yet; no anti-aliased lines; mipmap filtering seems to always be "nearest"; and that's about it so far, not bad. Then there is the fact that triangle rate is only about 1/4 of the proprietary driver. But that's still a lot.
For all the Slashdot posters who keep begging for Linux support and talking about how big companies constantly ignore you, this is your chance..
What, my chance to buy an nVidia card so I can have a driver that works?
Nice troll. I regularly develop on both Nvidia and Radeon 3D hardware of various kinds, using both Open Source and binary drivers. I hit more bugs with NVidia. For example, black screen on text console, mipmap loading failure if not done in a specific order, random garbage on screen with window resize, etc.
One thing I can say is, OpenGL performance is really good with proprietary drivers from both companies, thanks for that. But on balance I prefer to work with Radeon, it gives me less trouble, and I like being able to flip back and forth between the proprietary and open drivers. A lot.
nobody is willing to pay to get open source software ISC, FDA, etc. certified/approved. Good luck with that: shell out tens of thousands+ and then have someone repackage your stuff for sale, undercutting you.
So only closed source software not available for public inspection gets certified for use in hospitals? Ouch. Like I said: lags behind.
The native code still runs inside of the virtual machine which hobbles it to be slower than it should be.
That is not true. A JNI call can do whatever it wants, including calling native libraries, and including forking a separate process or thread. There is no "run inside a virtual machine", there is just "share the address space with Java threads".
The stack ranking system is nearly a carbon copy of Microsoft's
The promotion systems are nothing like each other between those two companies (I've worked at both). The (optional) peer stack ranking at Google is a small part of the peer-driven review system. Microsoft (at least when I was there) had the traditional manager-driven reviews and ranking. It is true that those very different sources of data led to an overall ranking at both companies, but I don't see how else you'd apply a threshold consistently.
Google talks a great peer review system but does not walk a great peer review system. Peer review, whether positive and negative, can be and is routinely ignored by managers. There are no checks and balances, ask around.
Unlike most tech companies, Google has no fixed maximum of people that can be promoted or given raises, just guidelines on what it takes to meet the threshold.
And "exceeds" are only given out to friends, and except for the lowest ranked employees, promotions likewise. There are exceptions of course, but the rule is pretty much the same as Microsoft, just not quite as far advanced down the GE path.
The result is inevitable degradation of the engineering culture.
Google has a near-weekly meeting where you can question anyone up to the CEO, and a culture that says that just about any topical question is fair game. This is an important check on culture degradation, and I've certainly not seen anything like it at another company with over a thousand employees.
This is nice its true, but you also better take care to softball your questions. "Larry I heard you can do one armed pushups, can I see you do it?" Avoid "is it true you expect new hires to accept below market compensation for the privilege of working at the world's most awesome company?"
Google certainly has its share of issues with bad hires that don't get along well, or projects and offices that get overrun with people who bring traditional IT-company culture with them from their former workplaces. Perhaps you were stuck in such a situation and I apologize. However the difference between Google and Microsoft (for me at least) is still night and day.
It would not surprise me if your Microsoft experience was way worse than your Google experience. I was in fact in a satellite office with serious leadership issues, however I spent plenty of time in MTV as well and I observed the same issues in many situations. Just not as bad as Microsoft, but in the absence of concert remedial action, well on the way to being a carbon copy. I did in fact witness the degradation of the engineering process over the years I was there. And getting back to the topic at hand, you can see the result in the many little stupid issues in the shipped software, that never get fixed year after year. For example, when my phone knows exactly where I am and I type in the name of a restaurant, why am I shown a map of China? When I get a upgrade completion notification on the main screen, why must I start the application to dismiss it? Why can't I write an application that bypasses Java completely, when everybody knows Java is an intellectual property minefield?
It seems like something like Meego (Linux+GL+Qt) would be the best way to go
I would be a lot more excited about Meego if it didn't use rpm for package management. While there is not much difference between rpm and deb capabilities technically, deb repositories tend to be a lot better put together and maintained. I use both on a regular basis.
So yeah, in this context, there's nothing wrong with Java (or rather Dalvik).
What about the collector pauses?
"Me too." I also find that I have to tap twice in many situations to get the phone's attention at all (G2/froyo). Not all that impressed to tell the truth, although I'm much happier with it than I would be with a totally locked down Apple product. But my Nokia music phone has a way smoother user interface and way quicker response. Oh, and a way better loudspeaker, the one that comes with the $500 G2 is quite pathetic.
The statement "run inside of a virtual machine" is misleading, it conflates two different meanings of "virtual machine".
1. Linux virtualization using namespaces etc or a hypervisor.
2. Java virtual machine, the bytecode interpreter.
Android uses neither according to this page. It does however play fast and loose with terminology. I have never heard a linux developer refer to normal Unix style uid security as "sandboxing", whereas the referenced page seems quite comfortable perpetrating that abuse.
I guess the bottom line is, don't blindly accept something as gospel just because it is posted on a Google site.
And you say that as an unbiased observer with no axe to grind, right?:-)
Right. I still own all my Google shares. However I am now properly disillusioned about a number of Google myths, but don't trust me. Ask any Googler, former or otherwise. In the latter case, make sure to do it out of earshot of other Googlers.
There are smart people at Google, and if they are really smart they learn early to keep their heads down. This seems to be the main sequence for large tech companies. Microsoft is far advanced on that path and Google seems more than a little determined to follow. The stack ranking system is nearly a carbon copy of Microsoft's, which in turn was copied from GE, and look how well that worked out. The result is inevitable degradation of the engineering culture. Now, warning about the negative consequences is not the same as axe grinding, quite the opposite.
Speaking as a former Googler, the smart people spin is somewhat overrated. Arrogant people is closer to the truth, and "smart" tends to mean "good at avoiding work".
Will OO.org automatically integrate with the software the hospital uses for transcription, radiology, and pathology reports? Not nicely. Is it worth the extra $$ to try and integrate it? No with potential lives on the line
With lives on the line it is criminal to use anything less than the most reliable software available and Windows is not it.
Colonizing Mars is just silly. The atmospheric pressure is about 1% of Earth's. Enough to have sandstorms, not enough to be useful. And it's 95% carbon dioxide. If the pressure was higher, there'd be some hope of terraforming, but no.
Colonizing and terraforming are two entirely different things. The former is practical with today's technology, the latter is not with any technology in the foreseeable future. As for the Martian atmosphere, it is in fact very useful. Parachutes and gliders work quite well in it, and the value of an abundant supply of CO2 is not to be underestimated. As for oxygen, the entire planet is covered in iron oxide. Add power and voila.
The worst places on Earth are far easier to explore and colonize than Mars.
I don't think that's correct. Real estate at the bottom of the Marianas trench is far less hospitable than Mars. The thing is, Mars has an abundant supply of that most valuable commodity: flat places to stand.
Even Luna is easier to work with.
I don't think that's correct either. Mars has far more abundant supplies of raw materials, and at least some atmosphere. All lunar landings have to be done on rockets. You can fly an airplane on Mars, not so on the moon.
A base on Luna is mostly a logistic problem; with enough lift capacity, it could be done today.
That is also true of Mars.
But none of this will ever happen with chemical rockets...
Are you actually arguing that, per unit of production, dia is cheaper than Visio? Blender is cheaper than Maya? That there's a cheaper CAD program than what AutoDesk offers?
That is your straw man argument, a logical fallacy. No, that was not my argument. My argument is that in many cases there exist open source solutions that are the equal of or better than proprietary alternatives, and that these solutions are usable by a large and growing class of users. This is an easily verifiable fact, if you want to gainsay that you might as well argue the sky is not blue. Gimp is a good example. What it lacks in interface polish it more than makes up for in efficiency and accuracy, never mind the price tag of $zero plus $zero per upgrade.
Now your argument: what is the per unit cost to your business of being powned by the Chinese government or anyone else who cares to?
I can't justify it to customers (with "I use free software so it's going to cost more to get it done" or otherwise).
So when it actually costs less than the proprietary alternative and in addition works better or even well enough, which describes a large and expanding class of solutions that apply to a large and expanding class of users, if you still say "it's going to cost more" then you remain a slime sucking troll. Just a simple economic argument. And that's not even considering the relative likelihood of becoming powned by the Chinese Government or whoever else cares to.
They won't. But they might hasten the release of the PS4.
Incidentally, in Cantonese "4" rhymes with "dead". Which is exactly what the PS4 is in my mind. After an extremely unsatisfying consumer experience with PS3, no new consoles from Sony will enter my home. Next generation it is back to PC gaming for me (and no, not on Windows).
"Following this, the team declared Sony's security to be EPIC FAIL!"
Is it really necessary for everybody to talk like complete dicks nowadays?
The point is, without the words "epic fail" how can you describe Sony's DRM strategy?
Incidentally, I used to be a PS3 booster but now after years being abused by Sony in many different ways I am anything but. My home now has the rule: buy nothing from Sony, ever, it is not worth the pain.
Visio -> dia SharePoint -> no solution MS Office -> open office Photoshop -> gimp anything AutoDesk -> Maya? any and all proprietary CRM/ERM/etc -> Salesforce Any and all medical systems, equipment, etc. -> nobody is getting near me with a medical machine running Windows that can kill me
And yet, none of these are a solution.
Only for a person of weak will or weak mind.
AutoDesk users use Maya? Do you even know what AutoDesk is? Go be a good schoolboy and look it up.
Visio -> dia SharePoint -> no solution MS Office -> open office Photoshop -> gimp anything AutoDesk -> Maya? any and all proprietary CRM/ERM/etc -> Salesforce Any and all medical systems, equipment, etc. -> nobody is getting near me with a medical machine running Windows that can kill me
Obviously, not every single Windows application has been replaced by Open Source, but many have and the trend is accelerating. Gimp in particular is an interesting question. I don't use anything else, and as far as I can see, the only reason anybody uses Photoshop now is interface preference. At a cost of several hundred dollars a seat, I will adapt my interface preference, thankyou. If worst comes to worst and I just can't stand it then I will whine to the Gimp developers. Believe it or not, they notice and are acting on the feedback. That is enough for me, until the shiny new one arrives I will just suck it up and enjoy Gimp's legendary quality and feature set.
Sharepoint is something I hear about as being wonderful, mostly from ex-Microsoft employees, but I have never seen anybody actually using it. I am sure they exist, I just haven't seen one. I don't even known what Sharepoint does or why I should want to clone it. Feel free to enlighten me.
There's a mountain of difference between the render farms and the end user desktops. Machines in a render farm tend to simply crunch numbers all day, so it makes perfect sense for them to run Linux - strip down the Linux install to be as bare as possible and set it to be a node on the LAN. This is a case where Linux always HAS performed extremely well, and I too would question the logic of running a render farm of any size on anything *but* Linux.
The desktop is a different story entirely.
You are making that up. Artists in the industry use Linux on the desktop more than Windows. The reason is, they get more work done that way. The competition is Apple, not Microsoft. In Tinseltown an artist will typically have a Linux machine for design work sitting beside a Mac for photoshopping and emailing.
Slashdot Mirror
OSS team is much, much smaller than the closed source team and can't possibly replicate that anyway.
I would be surprised if there are more than half a dozen engineers in either AMD or NVidia working fulltime on Linux drivers. There are maybe two or xorg developers working somewhat fulltime on Radeon, so the difference in team sizes is not really gigantic. I would think that access to information and historical code base to draw from is more of an issue. However I do not agree with your "can't possibly" at all. It is just a matter of time.
Sorry, but ATI driver is still PISS POOR relative to nVidia. It seems that everytime I install ANY distribution (... well, Fedora, Ubuntu or SUSE,) nVidia Just Works (tm)(r) but with ATI I have to download some weird thing from ATI, and the stuff (almost) never work right.
Simply not true for current offerings. Both Radeon and NVidia proprietary drivers + install scripts are a pain, and both are better than they used to be. Both offerings are fast as hell, but if you want hassle free kernel upgrades, nothing comes close to the open source Radeon drivers.
I think the issue with the open source radeon drivers isn't that the developers don't know how to implement stuff, or that it's a closed API or whatever. The problem is one of manpower.
I am sure that's it. However it's wonderful that I'm able to develop complex OpenGL apps with a reasonable expectation that things will work. Things that don't work: no buffer objects yet; no anti-aliased lines; mipmap filtering seems to always be "nearest"; and that's about it so far, not bad. Then there is the fact that triangle rate is only about 1/4 of the proprietary driver. But that's still a lot.
HD 6000 is a whole series of cards. The fanless version hasn't been released yet.
For all the Slashdot posters who keep begging for Linux support and talking about how big companies constantly ignore you, this is your chance..
What, my chance to buy an nVidia card so I can have a driver that works?
Nice troll. I regularly develop on both Nvidia and Radeon 3D hardware of various kinds, using both Open Source and binary drivers. I hit more bugs with NVidia. For example, black screen on text console, mipmap loading failure if not done in a specific order, random garbage on screen with window resize, etc.
One thing I can say is, OpenGL performance is really good with proprietary drivers from both companies, thanks for that. But on balance I prefer to work with Radeon, it gives me less trouble, and I like being able to flip back and forth between the proprietary and open drivers. A lot.
nobody is willing to pay to get open source software ISC, FDA, etc. certified/approved. Good luck with that: shell out tens of thousands+ and then have someone repackage your stuff for sale, undercutting you.
So only closed source software not available for public inspection gets certified for use in hospitals? Ouch. Like I said: lags behind.
You confused accounting dept with HR.
The native code still runs inside of the virtual machine which hobbles it to be slower than it should be.
That is not true. A JNI call can do whatever it wants, including calling native libraries, and including forking a separate process or thread. There is no "run inside a virtual machine", there is just "share the address space with Java threads".
The stack ranking system is nearly a carbon copy of Microsoft's
The promotion systems are nothing like each other between those two companies (I've worked at both). The (optional) peer stack ranking at Google is a small part of the peer-driven review system. Microsoft (at least when I was there) had the traditional manager-driven reviews and ranking. It is true that those very different sources of data led to an overall ranking at both companies, but I don't see how else you'd apply a threshold consistently.
Google talks a great peer review system but does not walk a great peer review system. Peer review, whether positive and negative, can be and is routinely ignored by managers. There are no checks and balances, ask around.
Unlike most tech companies, Google has no fixed maximum of people that can be promoted or given raises, just guidelines on what it takes to meet the threshold.
And "exceeds" are only given out to friends, and except for the lowest ranked employees, promotions likewise. There are exceptions of course, but the rule is pretty much the same as Microsoft, just not quite as far advanced down the GE path.
The result is inevitable degradation of the engineering culture.
Google has a near-weekly meeting where you can question anyone up to the CEO, and a culture that says that just about any topical question is fair game. This is an important check on culture degradation, and I've certainly not seen anything like it at another company with over a thousand employees.
This is nice its true, but you also better take care to softball your questions. "Larry I heard you can do one armed pushups, can I see you do it?" Avoid "is it true you expect new hires to accept below market compensation for the privilege of working at the world's most awesome company?"
Google certainly has its share of issues with bad hires that don't get along well, or projects and offices that get overrun with people who bring traditional IT-company culture with them from their former workplaces. Perhaps you were stuck in such a situation and I apologize. However the difference between Google and Microsoft (for me at least) is still night and day.
It would not surprise me if your Microsoft experience was way worse than your Google experience. I was in fact in a satellite office with serious leadership issues, however I spent plenty of time in MTV as well and I observed the same issues in many situations. Just not as bad as Microsoft, but in the absence of concert remedial action, well on the way to being a carbon copy. I did in fact witness the degradation of the engineering process over the years I was there. And getting back to the topic at hand, you can see the result in the many little stupid issues in the shipped software, that never get fixed year after year. For example, when my phone knows exactly where I am and I type in the name of a restaurant, why am I shown a map of China? When I get a upgrade completion notification on the main screen, why must I start the application to dismiss it? Why can't I write an application that bypasses Java completely, when everybody knows Java is an intellectual property minefield?
It seems like something like Meego (Linux+GL+Qt) would be the best way to go
I would be a lot more excited about Meego if it didn't use rpm for package management. While there is not much difference between rpm and deb capabilities technically, deb repositories tend to be a lot better put together and maintained. I use both on a regular basis.
How does it show how versatile it can be? Running with different hardware capabilities isn't something operating systems haven't done before.
Show me another operating system that rules both the top 500 supercomputer list and the smartphone market, not to mention many other segments.
What about the collector pauses?
"Me too." I also find that I have to tap twice in many situations to get the phone's attention at all (G2/froyo). Not all that impressed to tell the truth, although I'm much happier with it than I would be with a totally locked down Apple product. But my Nokia music phone has a way smoother user interface and way quicker response. Oh, and a way better loudspeaker, the one that comes with the $500 G2 is quite pathetic.
The statement "run inside of a virtual machine" is misleading, it conflates two different meanings of "virtual machine".
1. Linux virtualization using namespaces etc or a hypervisor.
2. Java virtual machine, the bytecode interpreter.
Android uses neither according to this page. It does however play fast and loose with terminology. I have never heard a linux developer refer to normal Unix style uid security as "sandboxing", whereas the referenced page seems quite comfortable perpetrating that abuse.
I guess the bottom line is, don't blindly accept something as gospel just because it is posted on a Google site.
And you say that as an unbiased observer with no axe to grind, right? :-)
Right. I still own all my Google shares. However I am now properly disillusioned about a number of Google myths, but don't trust me. Ask any Googler, former or otherwise. In the latter case, make sure to do it out of earshot of other Googlers.
There are smart people at Google, and if they are really smart they learn early to keep their heads down. This seems to be the main sequence for large tech companies. Microsoft is far advanced on that path and Google seems more than a little determined to follow. The stack ranking system is nearly a carbon copy of Microsoft's, which in turn was copied from GE, and look how well that worked out. The result is inevitable degradation of the engineering culture. Now, warning about the negative consequences is not the same as axe grinding, quite the opposite.
Speaking as a former Googler, the smart people spin is somewhat overrated. Arrogant people is closer to the truth, and "smart" tends to mean "good at avoiding work".
Will OO.org automatically integrate with the software the hospital uses for transcription, radiology, and pathology reports? Not nicely. Is it worth the extra $$ to try and integrate it? No with potential lives on the line
With lives on the line it is criminal to use anything less than the most reliable software available and Windows is not it.
Colonizing Mars is just silly. The atmospheric pressure is about 1% of Earth's. Enough to have sandstorms, not enough to be useful. And it's 95% carbon dioxide. If the pressure was higher, there'd be some hope of terraforming, but no.
Colonizing and terraforming are two entirely different things. The former is practical with today's technology, the latter is not with any technology in the foreseeable future. As for the Martian atmosphere, it is in fact very useful. Parachutes and gliders work quite well in it, and the value of an abundant supply of CO2 is not to be underestimated. As for oxygen, the entire planet is covered in iron oxide. Add power and voila.
The worst places on Earth are far easier to explore and colonize than Mars.
I don't think that's correct. Real estate at the bottom of the Marianas trench is far less hospitable than Mars. The thing is, Mars has an abundant supply of that most valuable commodity: flat places to stand.
Even Luna is easier to work with.
I don't think that's correct either. Mars has far more abundant supplies of raw materials, and at least some atmosphere. All lunar landings have to be done on rockets. You can fly an airplane on Mars, not so on the moon.
A base on Luna is mostly a logistic problem; with enough lift capacity, it could be done today.
That is also true of Mars.
But none of this will ever happen with chemical rockets...
You're sure about that?
Face it. There's no good off-Earth real estate in this solar system.
That's probably how the early Africans felt about the rest of the world too.
Are you actually arguing that, per unit of production, dia is cheaper than Visio? Blender is cheaper than Maya? That there's a cheaper CAD program than what AutoDesk offers?
That is your straw man argument, a logical fallacy. No, that was not my argument. My argument is that in many cases there exist open source solutions that are the equal of or better than proprietary alternatives, and that these solutions are usable by a large and growing class of users. This is an easily verifiable fact, if you want to gainsay that you might as well argue the sky is not blue. Gimp is a good example. What it lacks in interface polish it more than makes up for in efficiency and accuracy, never mind the price tag of $zero plus $zero per upgrade.
Now your argument: what is the per unit cost to your business of being powned by the Chinese government or anyone else who cares to?
I can't justify it to customers (with "I use free software so it's going to cost more to get it done" or otherwise).
So when it actually costs less than the proprietary alternative and in addition works better or even well enough, which describes a large and expanding class of solutions that apply to a large and expanding class of users, if you still say "it's going to cost more" then you remain a slime sucking troll. Just a simple economic argument. And that's not even considering the relative likelihood of becoming powned by the Chinese Government or whoever else cares to.
They won't. But they might hasten the release of the PS4.
Incidentally, in Cantonese "4" rhymes with "dead". Which is exactly what the PS4 is in my mind. After an extremely unsatisfying consumer experience with PS3, no new consoles from Sony will enter my home. Next generation it is back to PC gaming for me (and no, not on Windows).
"Following this, the team declared Sony's security to be EPIC FAIL!"
Is it really necessary for everybody to talk like complete dicks nowadays?
The point is, without the words "epic fail" how can you describe Sony's DRM strategy?
Incidentally, I used to be a PS3 booster but now after years being abused by Sony in many different ways I am anything but. My home now has the rule: buy nothing from Sony, ever, it is not worth the pain.
Visio -> dia
SharePoint -> no solution
MS Office -> open office
Photoshop -> gimp
anything AutoDesk -> Maya?
any and all proprietary CRM/ERM/etc -> Salesforce
Any and all medical systems, equipment, etc. -> nobody is getting near me with a medical machine running Windows that can kill me
And yet, none of these are a solution.
Only for a person of weak will or weak mind.
AutoDesk users use Maya? Do you even know what AutoDesk is? Go be a good schoolboy and look it up.
Rude and empty rhetoric. Yes I know what Autodesk is and which products they sell.
Dia does not: do gantt charts, project timelines, resource tracking...
If you use either Dia or Visio for project management then you have been promoted well past your level of competence.
or anything like that
A wild exaggeration.
Hell, it barely generates UML.
You are a troll. Goodbye.
Visio -> dia
SharePoint -> no solution
MS Office -> open office
Photoshop -> gimp
anything AutoDesk -> Maya?
any and all proprietary CRM/ERM/etc -> Salesforce
Any and all medical systems, equipment, etc. -> nobody is getting near me with a medical machine running Windows that can kill me
Obviously, not every single Windows application has been replaced by Open Source, but many have and the trend is accelerating. Gimp in particular is an interesting question. I don't use anything else, and as far as I can see, the only reason anybody uses Photoshop now is interface preference. At a cost of several hundred dollars a seat, I will adapt my interface preference, thankyou. If worst comes to worst and I just can't stand it then I will whine to the Gimp developers. Believe it or not, they notice and are acting on the feedback. That is enough for me, until the shiny new one arrives I will just suck it up and enjoy Gimp's legendary quality and feature set.
Sharepoint is something I hear about as being wonderful, mostly from ex-Microsoft employees, but I have never seen anybody actually using it. I am sure they exist, I just haven't seen one. I don't even known what Sharepoint does or why I should want to clone it. Feel free to enlighten me.
There's a mountain of difference between the render farms and the end user desktops. Machines in a render farm tend to simply crunch numbers all day, so it makes perfect sense for them to run Linux - strip down the Linux install to be as bare as possible and set it to be a node on the LAN. This is a case where Linux always HAS performed extremely well, and I too would question the logic of running a render farm of any size on anything *but* Linux.
The desktop is a different story entirely.
You are making that up. Artists in the industry use Linux on the desktop more than Windows. The reason is, they get more work done that way. The competition is Apple, not Microsoft. In Tinseltown an artist will typically have a Linux machine for design work sitting beside a Mac for photoshopping and emailing.
What's salesforce.com have to do with anything? Why should I care, specifically, about yet another 'cloud' service?
Nothing, I misread "CMS" as "CRM". On the other hand, Wordpress has everything to do with CMS, and is not proprietary.
Actually, it doesn't really matter which TLA you care to discuss, the trend is most probably towards open source in that application segment too.