There's a big difference between investing in open source and investing in a company. If you want to invest in open source or free software, send your money to a project (FSF, KDE, GNOME, whatever). That will put your money where your mouth is. Purchasing shares of a company isn't the same as supporting open source. Mandrake may produce open sourced software, but if you look at the facts of the situation you'll see that Mandrake is the ONLY company that uses its open source software. So, by supporting Mandrake's open source software, you aren't supporting open source in general. You're just allowing them to produce open source software and sell it (and make money from it) without having to dip into their own pockets.
Believe me, this is one snowball that you DON'T want to start rolling downhill. If every company that produces open source software holds it hostage until you all fork out $$ for it, you'll be in a world of hurt. Consider all the apps that are on Mandrake (or any other distro for that matter) that are produced with corporate backing of some sort, and you'll see how quickly your wallet may be depleted. When it's one company doing this it seems manageable; when it's hundreds, look out.
Make your money go further and invest in projects and "non-denominational" causes if you just want to support the production of open source software.
If you want to play with stocks, play with stocks. Gamble on the success of the business you're investing in, but don't invest as if this one company is going to be the savior of open source software (or as if NOT investing will cause the company to stop producing open source software. If that's the case, they must not be taking their open source stance as seriously as they should).
I don't get what your beef is... The issue is Red Hat announced that when Mozilla hits version 1.0, they'll switch to it (instead of using Netscape). What I'm saying is "big deal; everyone's going to switch to Mozilla when it hits 1.0". That's my point. There is nothing revolutionary about stating that you want to move to an open source version of Netscape's browser. When Mozilla hits 1.0, kiss Netscape's closed source browser goodbye because no Linux distro company that still thinks about its business is going to sign all the distribution agreement crap that Netscape wants to distribute its closed source browser.
As for RH making money supporting Mozilla, I doubt it. It's one of hundreds of packages on their distro. I'm sure they aren't getting paid to do any work with Mozilla; if anything they're the ones paying. That's fine; when they put money into open source software (like all Linux distro companies do, bar none), everyone benefits.
No Linux distro that is backed by any intelligence will be using Netscape browsers when Mozilla hits 1.0. Why would they? The source code is not available for Netscape browsers, so all bug fixes need to be handled by Netscape/AOL. Add to this the fact that feature-for-feature the new browsers (Netscape's and Mozilla's) are just about identical, and it's clear that there's not much of anything to lose by switching.
The only thing original about this is that Red Hat has announced it first. I'll be very, very surprised if any Linux distro ships Netscape after Mozilla is cooked. It just doesn't make sense.
Second, if you want to make a point, take off the anti-establishment hat and speak like an adult. You're in your 40s according to your web site; act like it.
Third, exactly what does Bush's tax cut have to do with technology companies not wanting to hire programmers? The slump in the tech sector started long before Clinton left office. Bush's tax cut proposal has as much to do with the tech slump as my cat's litterbox.
The tech slump is caused by a lot of over zealous hiring and hype in the 1999-2000 time frame. What we're seeing is a coming back to Earth for techies. It's not pretty, but so what? Consider it a correction.
And stop blaming Bush for every stinkin' thing that you don't like... I'm not a Bush fan either, but I don't blame him for everything going wrong with our economy. I consider this more the fallout from phony Clinton-era tech euphoria than anything else.
Has it occured to you that perhaps NASA -- after ROYALLY SCREWING UP with millions of dollars of our hard earned cash -- simply does not deserve the funds? Their track record of late royally SUCKS. Anyone who has not been living under a rock over the past few years knows this.
But hey, you seem to not have any problem with giving them millions of dollars to blast chunks of scrap into space, so maybe you wouldn't mind sending NASA a check? Personally, I'd rather my cash go to something more useful, like feeding people or getting some books in schools that are less than a decade old.
I'm sure we'll both be flamed mercilessly for our beliefs.
Here's an expansion on your argument. According to my sources, in 1990 the richest 1% of households paid 25% of our nation's taxes. In 1998, the same 1% paid 35%+ of our nation's taxes. With this tax cut (if it goes through), the same 1% will pay 33% of our taxes. So, this ain't a helluva cut.
Our problem isn't that the rich aren't being soaked enough. Our problem is that Congress (who controls spending) throws our money away to buy votes. They subsidize pointless medical treatments through Medicare and Medicaid as a way of padding the pockets of hospitals, they pay farmers to let food rot so they can keep prices high (forgetting that there are people starving in this country and elsewhere), they use the small business funds to help fund small Mom and Pop shops like AT&T and Sony, etc... And to top it all off, they slip pay raises for themselves in on page 534 subsection A paragraph 1.8 of a bill that would approve spraying for killer bees.
All of you out there who think the solution to our problem is to bleed rich people dry, guess again. Until our money is spent correctly, bleeding the rich will just translate into more bad spending policies. Fix Congress. Leave the rich alone.
By taking the price of their retail box down to around $5, they're helping to kill the very market that they need to exist to help push Linux (i.e.: retail Linux box sales). It costs easily twice that much per box. A company that is suffering as much as Corel is should know better than to do that. If anything, they should be doing what they can to push the prices higher so they can at least break even.
The "big fuzz" is that this has never been implemented in a complete fashion for Unixware. It's great that *BSD has this, but that doesn't benefit Unixware users very much, does it?
Think about it. If you're an ISV and you want to port your multi-million $$ generating database system to Linux, but you don't want to give up the power behind your Unixware version, you can port to Linux and run the Linux version on both Linux and Unixware w/ LKP. You only have one port to support and maintain, you get revenue from two markets (does anyone using Linux actually pay for software? I don't know of many).
All of this, just by adding LKP on top of Unixware. What's not to like?
"Another operating system"? It's Linux. And it's Unixware. Both have been around for years. Caldera's merely allowing one to run on top of another. The libraries, APIs, whatever should be the same.
It would be nice if the kernel sources could be opened, but from last week's LinuxToday article (re: the same subject) one concludes the following:
1) There's a lot of code in the Unixware kernel that's licensed from third parties and hence can not be opened by Caldera
2) Even if the sources were opened, odds are nobody would use them. This isn't because of any grudges or snobbiness; it's a matter of the Linux kernel and the Unixware kernel being somewhat different at the levels where the opened up sources would benefit (non stop clustering, SMP, etc.)
I doubt that there's much that can be done with the Unixware kernel sources when taking these two items into consideration. It would be nice if the sources were opened, but I doubt it would accomplish much.
First, a trademark is a trademark, and if the usage of another company's/organization's trademark is causing confusion and loss of revenue, the company/organization that owns the trademark should defend it and ask that the trademark not be used without prior arrangement. You would ask nothing less from Linus for misuse of the "Linux" trademark; we should not hold the SSH guys to any other standard.
Second, regarding "Mandrake". I don't recall there being any rule that only one use of the word "Mandrake" is allowed in the entire Linux industry. I have heard of the developer Mandrake and am familiar with his work, but I don't have any problem separating him from the Linux distribution Mandrake. I would guess that newbies who are just picking up the Mandrake distribution would not be familiar enough with the developer Mandrake to be confused (if they're new to Linux, how would they know who Mandrake is?).
By the way, I want all Erik's to stop using the name "Erik". I've been using and evangelizing Linux since 1991, and other than Eric Youngdale I can't think of ANY other Eri[ck]s in the industry that predate me. So, all Eri[ck]s, please stop using your names in public when there is a Linux context involved...
I think there's a difference between broadcasting something un-prompted and simply answering questions.
I, for one, had no idea that either Kirk or Eric was gay before reading the interview. That alone tells me that they don't exactly "broadcast" their sexual preferences (I've known about both of them as techies for many years; you'd think I'd have heard by now that they are homosexuals if they broadcasted the fact).
The fact that they discussed their preferences while being interviewed by a gay teen online magazine makes sense to me. If they were helping Merill cook up some gumbo (BAM!) and they just came out and started discussing their sex lives, I'd probably accuse them of broadcasting, though.
Re:Be Aware of the powerdrain !!!
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Okay, I meant to say "...expecting the developer edition of the VR3 to be ready for DEPLOYMENT [emphasis added]," not ready for DEVELOPMENT.
Duh...
Re:Be Aware of the powerdrain !!!
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I think what we have here is a case of someone expecting the developer edition of the VR3 to be ready for development.
I have some news, folks: when Agenda says "developer edition", they mean the unit is for developing the VR3 and its subsystem. This is NOT a device that should be expected to be ready for deployment. You're getting an advance copy of the hardware, and with this privilege (yes, privilege: you're getting a 100% flash unit for around cost) you are expected to help Agenda produce a better PDA. If you wish to develop apps for it, great! The tools are all available. But the main reason for allowing these things out the door is so that all of the bugs can be worked out for the "official" release which has not happened yet.
The only reasons to get a developer edition of a VR3 are (a) curiosity (which is bad, because curious people tend to expect it to be fully cooked), or (b) a desire to be able to replace the entire system -- OS and everything -- with something updated or something completely different. If you're getting it to have PDAs for your sales team, or if you're just looking for something on which to develop FLTK/mipsel apps, go elsewhere or wait for the "official" VR3s to be released later this year.
Please...
(Note: I don't have any affiliation with Agenda whatsoever beyond my membership in their developer program and a firm belief that these puppies are going to provide serious competition for Palm devices in the near future.)
Re:Technology looking for a problem to solve
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The "failure" of NDS isn't because it's proprietary; it's because Novell didn't have the foresight to enable anything to use it other than Netware. And besides, NDS is a directory; Volution is not a directory, but it can utilize a directory (like NDS, or LDAP, or whatever).
You say that people buy solutions to solve problems. Volution is a solution (sorry about the rhyme), not an enabler. Clearly you don't fully understand what Volution is, otherwise you would not have made that statement. Volution is nothing like NDS or any other enabler technology; it's a management system that utilizes enablement technologies.
Now, on to the open source statements... The idea that making anything open source will cause it to be ubiquitous is silly. Here's a few examples to chew on: Mozilla, the.deb packaging format, Qt (no, I'm not interested in starting another war!). All are used by a number of organizations. None are what I would consider "ubiquitous", other than maybe Qt, and even then it seems to be in an endless up-hill struggle to achieve/maintain the success it's enjoyed.
In conclusion, I'd have to say that your message was a decent attempt at squashing Volution, but unfortunately it is not as well thought out as it should be. A bit of research would have prevented this unfortunate posting from taking place.
You don't get ANY unsolicited snail mail? That's impressive...
My personal experience is that it's quicker to hit a delete key to get rid of an unwanted message (or to tag a list of them and delete them all at once) than it is to get rid of snail mail, but that's just my experience. And besides, snail mail means someone has my home address, which gives me more heebie jeebies than someone having my email address.
Again, these are just personal opinions. Everyone is entitled to their own...
(I will restate to those who think at this point that I endorse spam: I am severely opposed to spam, and I have no intention of endorsing it. I do, however, believe that it is unavoidable at this point, or if there is a way to get rid of it, it will find its way back in your mailbox if you don't constantly fight it. I hate to say it, but that's where I think we are at this point. It's a plague that will never completely go away...)
First off, they're giving you time to re-opt-out of the mailings. They are not sending any mail to you (despite re-setting all of the choices to "yes") until you have passed the date by which you can set your choices back to "no". That's fair warning.
Second, even if they pull this on you every month, you still have a choice of opting out, and besides, that's one email instead of the 50-100 you would have gotten per month if you would have kept the options set to "yes".
I can deal with this. Even monthly. eBay is THE auction site on the Internet, and to date I have had 0 bad experiences with them (one idiot that sold me a hands-free kit for my mobile phone pocketed 80% of what I paid for shipping and then sent my item in the slowest, cheapest manner possible, but that's my only beef; every other experience I've had with eBay has been stellar).
Spam mail sucks, and I'd like to see it go away. However, my anti-spam measures are not quite as extreme as those of others. I do not kid myself into thinking I can just opt out of junk email any more than I think I can opt out of junk snail mail. Unless you pick up and move, then don't leave any kind of trail leading to where you went, it's impossible to shake this stuff. I can fight it and get pissed off over and over again, or I can meet these spammers half way and control the flood.
You missed the point. Hate Caldera and SCO if you want, the fact is the Caldera IPO and SCO merger were both year 2000 news, and Upside acted like neither happened.
Regardless of what people think of Caldera and SCO, the Caldera IPO and merger with SCO was BIG NEWS in 2000. Not only was this not highlighted with all the other companies Upside wrote about, but it WASN'T EVEN MENTIONED.
Yet another example of "I don't understand Linux so I'll just write about the two or three companies I'm familiar with" journalism. I'm starting to grow numb to it (I guess not fast enough, though).
If you want a good, complete wrap up of 2000, go to Linux Weekly News and check out their timeline. Upside's wrap up is a slapped together piece of journalistic guano.
I live in Utah, and I can say he isn't representing my views. I can see these line items being abused. Sort of like the whole McCarthy/communism thing a few decades ago.
As for "a lot of conservative people who are afraid of the Internet in Utah..." Are you a Utah resident? I am, and I think in all honesty that Utah is one of the more "wired" states in the nation. Having moved here from the D.C. area, I noticed very quickly the contrast of how well connected Utahans are compared to those in the D.C. area. Hell, the Internet was partially born at the University of Utah. We breed techies in this state.:) (I'm conservative as well.)
Man, no kidding! I read Red Hat's press release, and if I didn't know any better I'd have to say that Red Hat is trying to sound like uClinux is theirs.
I think there may be lots of people responding to this story that don't have all the facts regarding IBM's Linux/ThinkPad support.
The only reason they currently support one Linux distro (eDesktop 2.4) is probably due to the fact that it's currently the only distro that they officially pre-load. I gather some upgrades were required to make things like X work, too, so they put in some engineering time of their own to get even that much working. If they had to do this with eDesktop, they'll for sure have to do that with other distros when they start pre-loading. I've seen announcements recently regarding Red Hat, SuSE, and Turbolinux getting the same arrangement soon (or was that just for servers? I can't remember), so this is far from being a one-trick-pony type thing.
No hardware manufacturer who wants to stay in business will support any random Linux distro installed by any random user; there must be controls, otherwise the company will lose its ass on support and will drop support for ALL of them.
What I think people here need to consider is how amazing it is that IBM is pre-loading Linux on ThinkPads at all. Rather than poo poo it because it isn't sweeping enough, congratulate them for it and help to support them by spreading the word. If this doesn't work out to be a profitable venture, got news for yuh, it'll go away.
The fact that IBM is working with the free O/S community at all is great! And when the BSDs become more popular (and don't think they won't; they can already give Linux a run for its money, and the various free BSDs can be obtained from numerous shops pre-loaded on systems, within firewall boxes, etc.) I'm sure IBM will have no choice but to consider them as well.
Come on, folks, this is fantastic stuff! Stop looking at the things that aren't in place yet, and start looking at what's there now, and where this will all be heading. Good grief, IBM can't become a 100% Linux company overnight fer cryin' out loud...
The GNOME Foundation is formed with the notable absence of plenty of Linux companies, and Taco says hooray... The KDE League is formed with the notable absence of Red Hat and VA, and Taco poo poos the thing.
You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, Malda. But hey, at least you didn't beg people not to flame you this time. I guess you decided after the last "I'm flaming but please don't flame me back" comment you made (I think it was when the Caldera/SCO merger was announced) that you really deserve to be treated the same way you treat others. I'll give you that much credit.
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There's a big difference between investing in open source and investing in a company. If you want to invest in open source or free software, send your money to a project (FSF, KDE, GNOME, whatever). That will put your money where your mouth is. Purchasing shares of a company isn't the same as supporting open source. Mandrake may produce open sourced software, but if you look at the facts of the situation you'll see that Mandrake is the ONLY company that uses its open source software. So, by supporting Mandrake's open source software, you aren't supporting open source in general. You're just allowing them to produce open source software and sell it (and make money from it) without having to dip into their own pockets.
Believe me, this is one snowball that you DON'T want to start rolling downhill. If every company that produces open source software holds it hostage until you all fork out $$ for it, you'll be in a world of hurt. Consider all the apps that are on Mandrake (or any other distro for that matter) that are produced with corporate backing of some sort, and you'll see how quickly your wallet may be depleted. When it's one company doing this it seems manageable; when it's hundreds, look out.
Make your money go further and invest in projects and "non-denominational" causes if you just want to support the production of open source software.
If you want to play with stocks, play with stocks. Gamble on the success of the business you're investing in, but don't invest as if this one company is going to be the savior of open source software (or as if NOT investing will cause the company to stop producing open source software. If that's the case, they must not be taking their open source stance as seriously as they should).
I don't get what your beef is... The issue is Red Hat announced that when Mozilla hits version 1.0, they'll switch to it (instead of using Netscape). What I'm saying is "big deal; everyone's going to switch to Mozilla when it hits 1.0". That's my point. There is nothing revolutionary about stating that you want to move to an open source version of Netscape's browser. When Mozilla hits 1.0, kiss Netscape's closed source browser goodbye because no Linux distro company that still thinks about its business is going to sign all the distribution agreement crap that Netscape wants to distribute its closed source browser.
As for RH making money supporting Mozilla, I doubt it. It's one of hundreds of packages on their distro. I'm sure they aren't getting paid to do any work with Mozilla; if anything they're the ones paying. That's fine; when they put money into open source software (like all Linux distro companies do, bar none), everyone benefits.
No Linux distro that is backed by any intelligence will be using Netscape browsers when Mozilla hits 1.0. Why would they? The source code is not available for Netscape browsers, so all bug fixes need to be handled by Netscape/AOL. Add to this the fact that feature-for-feature the new browsers (Netscape's and Mozilla's) are just about identical, and it's clear that there's not much of anything to lose by switching.
The only thing original about this is that Red Hat has announced it first. I'll be very, very surprised if any Linux distro ships Netscape after Mozilla is cooked. It just doesn't make sense.
First off, it's "recession", not "ression".
Second, if you want to make a point, take off the anti-establishment hat and speak like an adult. You're in your 40s according to your web site; act like it.
Third, exactly what does Bush's tax cut have to do with technology companies not wanting to hire programmers? The slump in the tech sector started long before Clinton left office. Bush's tax cut proposal has as much to do with the tech slump as my cat's litterbox.
The tech slump is caused by a lot of over zealous hiring and hype in the 1999-2000 time frame. What we're seeing is a coming back to Earth for techies. It's not pretty, but so what? Consider it a correction.
And stop blaming Bush for every stinkin' thing that you don't like... I'm not a Bush fan either, but I don't blame him for everything going wrong with our economy. I consider this more the fallout from phony Clinton-era tech euphoria than anything else.
Has it occured to you that perhaps NASA -- after ROYALLY SCREWING UP with millions of dollars of our hard earned cash -- simply does not deserve the funds? Their track record of late royally SUCKS. Anyone who has not been living under a rock over the past few years knows this.
But hey, you seem to not have any problem with giving them millions of dollars to blast chunks of scrap into space, so maybe you wouldn't mind sending NASA a check? Personally, I'd rather my cash go to something more useful, like feeding people or getting some books in schools that are less than a decade old.
I guess our priorities are different, huh?
Bravo... The voice of reason.
I'm sure we'll both be flamed mercilessly for our beliefs.
Here's an expansion on your argument. According to my sources, in 1990 the richest 1% of households paid 25% of our nation's taxes. In 1998, the same 1% paid 35%+ of our nation's taxes. With this tax cut (if it goes through), the same 1% will pay 33% of our taxes. So, this ain't a helluva cut.
Our problem isn't that the rich aren't being soaked enough. Our problem is that Congress (who controls spending) throws our money away to buy votes. They subsidize pointless medical treatments through Medicare and Medicaid as a way of padding the pockets of hospitals, they pay farmers to let food rot so they can keep prices high (forgetting that there are people starving in this country and elsewhere), they use the small business funds to help fund small Mom and Pop shops like AT&T and Sony, etc... And to top it all off, they slip pay raises for themselves in on page 534 subsection A paragraph 1.8 of a bill that would approve spraying for killer bees.
All of you out there who think the solution to our problem is to bleed rich people dry, guess again. Until our money is spent correctly, bleeding the rich will just translate into more bad spending policies. Fix Congress. Leave the rich alone.
By taking the price of their retail box down to around $5, they're helping to kill the very market that they need to exist to help push Linux (i.e.: retail Linux box sales). It costs easily twice that much per box. A company that is suffering as much as Corel is should know better than to do that. If anything, they should be doing what they can to push the prices higher so they can at least break even.
They deserve what they get...
The "big fuzz" is that this has never been implemented in a complete fashion for Unixware. It's great that *BSD has this, but that doesn't benefit Unixware users very much, does it?
It's easy. One port, two platforms.
Think about it. If you're an ISV and you want to port your multi-million $$ generating database system to Linux, but you don't want to give up the power behind your Unixware version, you can port to Linux and run the Linux version on both Linux and Unixware w/ LKP. You only have one port to support and maintain, you get revenue from two markets (does anyone using Linux actually pay for software? I don't know of many).
All of this, just by adding LKP on top of Unixware. What's not to like?
"Another operating system"? It's Linux. And it's Unixware. Both have been around for years. Caldera's merely allowing one to run on top of another. The libraries, APIs, whatever should be the same.
???
It would be nice if the kernel sources could be opened, but from last week's LinuxToday article (re: the same subject) one concludes the following:
1) There's a lot of code in the Unixware kernel that's licensed from third parties and hence can not be opened by Caldera
2) Even if the sources were opened, odds are nobody would use them. This isn't because of any grudges or snobbiness; it's a matter of the Linux kernel and the Unixware kernel being somewhat different at the levels where the opened up sources would benefit (non stop clustering, SMP, etc.)
I doubt that there's much that can be done with the Unixware kernel sources when taking these two items into consideration. It would be nice if the sources were opened, but I doubt it would accomplish much.
First, a trademark is a trademark, and if the usage of another company's/organization's trademark is causing confusion and loss of revenue, the company/organization that owns the trademark should defend it and ask that the trademark not be used without prior arrangement. You would ask nothing less from Linus for misuse of the "Linux" trademark; we should not hold the SSH guys to any other standard.
Second, regarding "Mandrake". I don't recall there being any rule that only one use of the word "Mandrake" is allowed in the entire Linux industry. I have heard of the developer Mandrake and am familiar with his work, but I don't have any problem separating him from the Linux distribution Mandrake. I would guess that newbies who are just picking up the Mandrake distribution would not be familiar enough with the developer Mandrake to be confused (if they're new to Linux, how would they know who Mandrake is?).
By the way, I want all Erik's to stop using the name "Erik". I've been using and evangelizing Linux since 1991, and other than Eric Youngdale I can't think of ANY other Eri[ck]s in the industry that predate me. So, all Eri[ck]s, please stop using your names in public when there is a Linux context involved...
Heh...
I think there's a difference between broadcasting something un-prompted and simply answering questions.
I, for one, had no idea that either Kirk or Eric was gay before reading the interview. That alone tells me that they don't exactly "broadcast" their sexual preferences (I've known about both of them as techies for many years; you'd think I'd have heard by now that they are homosexuals if they broadcasted the fact).
The fact that they discussed their preferences while being interviewed by a gay teen online magazine makes sense to me. If they were helping Merill cook up some gumbo (BAM!) and they just came out and started discussing their sex lives, I'd probably accuse them of broadcasting, though.
Okay, I meant to say "...expecting the developer edition of the VR3 to be ready for DEPLOYMENT [emphasis added]," not ready for DEVELOPMENT.
Duh...
I think what we have here is a case of someone expecting the developer edition of the VR3 to be ready for development.
I have some news, folks: when Agenda says "developer edition", they mean the unit is for developing the VR3 and its subsystem. This is NOT a device that should be expected to be ready for deployment. You're getting an advance copy of the hardware, and with this privilege (yes, privilege: you're getting a 100% flash unit for around cost) you are expected to help Agenda produce a better PDA. If you wish to develop apps for it, great! The tools are all available. But the main reason for allowing these things out the door is so that all of the bugs can be worked out for the "official" release which has not happened yet.
The only reasons to get a developer edition of a VR3 are (a) curiosity (which is bad, because curious people tend to expect it to be fully cooked), or (b) a desire to be able to replace the entire system -- OS and everything -- with something updated or something completely different. If you're getting it to have PDAs for your sales team, or if you're just looking for something on which to develop FLTK/mipsel apps, go elsewhere or wait for the "official" VR3s to be released later this year.
Please...
(Note: I don't have any affiliation with Agenda whatsoever beyond my membership in their developer program and a firm belief that these puppies are going to provide serious competition for Palm devices in the near future.)
The "failure" of NDS isn't because it's proprietary; it's because Novell didn't have the foresight to enable anything to use it other than Netware. And besides, NDS is a directory; Volution is not a directory, but it can utilize a directory (like NDS, or LDAP, or whatever).
.deb packaging format, Qt (no, I'm not interested in starting another war!). All are used by a number of organizations. None are what I would consider "ubiquitous", other than maybe Qt, and even then it seems to be in an endless up-hill struggle to achieve/maintain the success it's enjoyed.
You say that people buy solutions to solve problems. Volution is a solution (sorry about the rhyme), not an enabler. Clearly you don't fully understand what Volution is, otherwise you would not have made that statement. Volution is nothing like NDS or any other enabler technology; it's a management system that utilizes enablement technologies.
Now, on to the open source statements... The idea that making anything open source will cause it to be ubiquitous is silly. Here's a few examples to chew on: Mozilla, the
In conclusion, I'd have to say that your message was a decent attempt at squashing Volution, but unfortunately it is not as well thought out as it should be. A bit of research would have prevented this unfortunate posting from taking place.
You don't get ANY unsolicited snail mail? That's impressive...
My personal experience is that it's quicker to hit a delete key to get rid of an unwanted message (or to tag a list of them and delete them all at once) than it is to get rid of snail mail, but that's just my experience. And besides, snail mail means someone has my home address, which gives me more heebie jeebies than someone having my email address.
Again, these are just personal opinions. Everyone is entitled to their own...
(I will restate to those who think at this point that I endorse spam: I am severely opposed to spam, and I have no intention of endorsing it. I do, however, believe that it is unavoidable at this point, or if there is a way to get rid of it, it will find its way back in your mailbox if you don't constantly fight it. I hate to say it, but that's where I think we are at this point. It's a plague that will never completely go away...)
One question: what have you done to stop junk mail from coming to your home? Anything?
First off, they're giving you time to re-opt-out of the mailings. They are not sending any mail to you (despite re-setting all of the choices to "yes") until you have passed the date by which you can set your choices back to "no". That's fair warning.
Second, even if they pull this on you every month, you still have a choice of opting out, and besides, that's one email instead of the 50-100 you would have gotten per month if you would have kept the options set to "yes".
I can deal with this. Even monthly. eBay is THE auction site on the Internet, and to date I have had 0 bad experiences with them (one idiot that sold me a hands-free kit for my mobile phone pocketed 80% of what I paid for shipping and then sent my item in the slowest, cheapest manner possible, but that's my only beef; every other experience I've had with eBay has been stellar).
Spam mail sucks, and I'd like to see it go away. However, my anti-spam measures are not quite as extreme as those of others. I do not kid myself into thinking I can just opt out of junk email any more than I think I can opt out of junk snail mail. Unless you pick up and move, then don't leave any kind of trail leading to where you went, it's impossible to shake this stuff. I can fight it and get pissed off over and over again, or I can meet these spammers half way and control the flood.
I'll opt for control.
You missed the point. Hate Caldera and SCO if you want, the fact is the Caldera IPO and SCO merger were both year 2000 news, and Upside acted like neither happened.
Perhaps you work for Upside...
Regardless of what people think of Caldera and SCO, the Caldera IPO and merger with SCO was BIG NEWS in 2000. Not only was this not highlighted with all the other companies Upside wrote about, but it WASN'T EVEN MENTIONED.
Yet another example of "I don't understand Linux so I'll just write about the two or three companies I'm familiar with" journalism. I'm starting to grow numb to it (I guess not fast enough, though).
If you want a good, complete wrap up of 2000, go to Linux Weekly News and check out their timeline. Upside's wrap up is a slapped together piece of journalistic guano.
I live in Utah, and I can say he isn't representing my views. I can see these line items being abused. Sort of like the whole McCarthy/communism thing a few decades ago.
:) (I'm conservative as well.)
As for "a lot of conservative people who are afraid of the Internet in Utah..." Are you a Utah resident? I am, and I think in all honesty that Utah is one of the more "wired" states in the nation. Having moved here from the D.C. area, I noticed very quickly the contrast of how well connected Utahans are compared to those in the D.C. area. Hell, the Internet was partially born at the University of Utah. We breed techies in this state.
Anyhow, that's all.
Man, no kidding! I read Red Hat's press release, and if I didn't know any better I'd have to say that Red Hat is trying to sound like uClinux is theirs.
BS, I say... uClinux is a Lineo product.
I hope Lineo's looking into this.
I think there may be lots of people responding to this story that don't have all the facts regarding IBM's Linux/ThinkPad support.
The only reason they currently support one Linux distro (eDesktop 2.4) is probably due to the fact that it's currently the only distro that they officially pre-load. I gather some upgrades were required to make things like X work, too, so they put in some engineering time of their own to get even that much working. If they had to do this with eDesktop, they'll for sure have to do that with other distros when they start pre-loading. I've seen announcements recently regarding Red Hat, SuSE, and Turbolinux getting the same arrangement soon (or was that just for servers? I can't remember), so this is far from being a one-trick-pony type thing.
No hardware manufacturer who wants to stay in business will support any random Linux distro installed by any random user; there must be controls, otherwise the company will lose its ass on support and will drop support for ALL of them.
What I think people here need to consider is how amazing it is that IBM is pre-loading Linux on ThinkPads at all. Rather than poo poo it because it isn't sweeping enough, congratulate them for it and help to support them by spreading the word. If this doesn't work out to be a profitable venture, got news for yuh, it'll go away.
The fact that IBM is working with the free O/S community at all is great! And when the BSDs become more popular (and don't think they won't; they can already give Linux a run for its money, and the various free BSDs can be obtained from numerous shops pre-loaded on systems, within firewall boxes, etc.) I'm sure IBM will have no choice but to consider them as well.
Come on, folks, this is fantastic stuff! Stop looking at the things that aren't in place yet, and start looking at what's there now, and where this will all be heading. Good grief, IBM can't become a 100% Linux company overnight fer cryin' out loud...
The GNOME Foundation is formed with the notable absence of plenty of Linux companies, and Taco says hooray... The KDE League is formed with the notable absence of Red Hat and VA, and Taco poo poos the thing.
You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, Malda. But hey, at least you didn't beg people not to flame you this time. I guess you decided after the last "I'm flaming but please don't flame me back" comment you made (I think it was when the Caldera/SCO merger was announced) that you really deserve to be treated the same way you treat others. I'll give you that much credit.