Perhaps the Slashdot people should be giving out awards. I think categories like "Best OS" "Largest Contribution" "Most Value" and "Most Ambitious" would be good.
Gandhi virtually invented non-violent protest. That is quite a hack giving that no one knew of doing that at the time! Martin Luther King Jr was infuenced by Gandhi and is one of the reason's the civil rights movement worked so well.
I'd definitely give Gandhi a slot on the top ten list.
Games get addicting. Playing them makes you hours pass by you and them at some point you wonder where all your time goes.
You don't contribute to yourself or society. Don't you want to change the world?
Playing Quake makes you get good at playing Quake and that's all. It has nothing to do with athletic ability, intellect, or imagination. The only exception could be that Quake may improve your tactical ability.
Most games hand you an easy reality. Nothing worth doing is easy.
A friend's brother is a hardcore gamer. I don't know what your definition of hardcore gamer is but he is what I think of by the term. His parents only let him use the internet on weekends... for good reason. He spends 12 or more hours a day playing computer games. I know I can never call during the weekend because he is tieing up the phones.
He is definetly wasting his time. The fact is that games are easy - no one gets hurt. You don't get sore. You barely use any energy by sitting on your ass all day.
And to top it off: you don't have to think about it. It is all knee-jerk reactions. No wonder the gaming industry makes so much money.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Yes. I think the good idea is to start everything from scratch. All our current toolkits is based on X and Berlin will never need toolkits. The widgets themselves can be replaced and any language can be used that has a CORBA binding.
Berlin is not as far but has the superior design. Once it gets started I think you will see development speed up.
What do you mean by wasted effort? Are you saying we should only have one windowing enviroment forever? If there was a project I was interested in developing I would work on it and I wouldn't give a damn about production value or how well it competes with Microsoft or how much it furthers the movement. I think Berlin is wholly remarkable in design. I am looking forward to a more usable release.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I have been keeping tabs on Berlin development and they most defintely will not keep an X compatible API. Berlin is ahead of its time and the whole point of the project is to go beyond what we have now with X. They have a very nice architechture and I don't think X should ruin it.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
(a) I (and many other people, I suspect) don't particularly care what Netscape Corporation thinks "the market" demands, I just want a working way to view Web pages: ie, HTML and image rendering.
You contradict yourself! YOU are part of the market! Thinking that way is a ME ME ME attitude and can't be healthy.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
But geese guys! Linus is an excellent coder from what I've heard but this reminds me way too much of the celebrity worship I despise so much in the mainstream. Now my comrades do the same in our bailiwick?
Please, say it ain't so? There isn't even anything worthwhile on the page and people already want to by one or four!
I am very skeptical with this new chip. Especially with so many people are going to fall over each other to buy one. I certainly hope everyone will wait for this chip to prove itself before we all hop on the bandwagon.
Also, think about this: Which one do you want to win? Linus the marketer or Linus the coder? In other words, let this chip be succesful on its own merits. Linus shouldn't be a factor.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I heard somewhere that unless the performance is over 50%, you won't notice it. Also note that Linux is only the kernal. Unless you are using a server for many machines, I don't think the performance boost will be apparent at all in the application, X Windows system, or desktop enviroment.
All in all, there is little incentive to compile your kernal other than to be one of the elite.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I'm sure this will get moderated down as flame bait because I disagree with the general consensus here at/.
So moderate this down to a -20, but mark my words. The arrogance of the linux community will destroy itself.
ARRRRGGGG! I hate it when people do this. Play the rebel annd show everyone you are breaking the trend. If someone moderates you down then they are evil conformosts.
I think the slashdot community is perhaps the most open minded. You wouldn't have been moderated down even without the pleeinng. And conformity is something most slashdotters dislike and you won't be demoted for being different.
Even if someone does moderate you down, slashdot has this nice moderator check to double check against unfair moderation. Beleive it or not but sometimes the system works.
Now I would like to respond to your comment. GNOME looks ten times better than Windows using a really nice theme. I do digress that Windows is faster. October GNOME is much faster than that ucky 1.0.0 release. Unless you have started Netscape, GNOME is really responsive. I think the fault lies with X because the GUI is slow even without GNOME. Then again someone commented a while ago how Windows uses hardware accels for its fine GUI performance.
You do have a point about GNOME not having simple color schemes. I wonder how difficult it would be for their to be a way to change the colors of the default theme.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I have the feeling that most of you are thinking relative to the existing business model. But if you put services first, there are some real possibilities.
Imagine you are Joe Newbie. You install GNOME and suscribe to the Support service by miguel's company. You pay a nominal fee each month. Then every other week you get a CD in the mail with various updates and bug fixes. Also you get a newsletter with various happenings in GNOME world.
Lets say that Joe newbie is having problems with Gnumeric crashing. He emails support with his problem and gets a reply that they have fixed the problem. The fix will be installed on the next CD or can be downloaded. Not only that but the fix will be distributed to all the subscribers.
Now lets say Joe Newbie wants a certain feature. Like perhaps animated icons. He emails support and they say that they will charge a fee but the fee is less for subscribers. The feature will be developed in six weeks and will come on that CD. If the feature is benificial for GNOME as a whole it will be on everyone's CD and included in the next GNOME distribution.
Gnome support could develop themes, desktop wallpaper, alternate icons, etc. They could propietize these which I don't think is against the principles of free software: they are creative works.
Many users will like this service. They always have the latest stable software.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Yeah. That was smart of them. Now they got Active desktop, web folders, HTML help, etc. in Windows 98. Even an application my mom uses uses the IE component.
But I see more potential with Free Software. Bonobo technology, for instance will let you embed graphics into the filemanager, icon lists into a spreadsheet, spreadsheets onto the desktop, etc. I think KDE is a ways ahead in this technology (I saw a screenshot of Konqueror with an embeded terrminal).
I think with Free Software, this technology will probably be used more. I think the idea of embedding things on the desktop is a very intriguing idea. Who needs wallpaper when you can embed a graphic. We can even mimic ActiveDesktop with a Mozilla or KHTML componetent.
Ah, the possibilities.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Strictly speaking, there is nothing in CSS that allows flashing or blinking.
I don't think CSS can work the way you describe. All browsers I know have compliant or incomplete CSS support. The biggest plus about CSS is that it degrades gracefully. The HTML itself is very standard: P, TABLE, IMG, EM, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, H@, etc. So if you view the page with a browser with CSS, you get nice looking web page. Without CSS support the page looks like nothing less than regular boring HTML with all content (which a lot of people prefer).
I must digress that the pixel-based layout in CSS does scare me. I think pixel-based anything is a bad idea... limits the resolution people can view the page in.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Usually when different people are separated they don't get along to well when together. Us people in the United States don't think to highly of China and that is mostly because we don't know or see any Chinese a lot. And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
Now reading the above comments I notice that there are many respectful comments posted here. Virtually all respectful comments. Good. This means the internet is doing its job.
Because the internet is an international medium we talk to foreign people on a daily basis. My history teachers says the best way to do away with prejudice is bring these people together. That is exactly what is happening.
Oh! What a great world we live in!
I just wanted to point this out.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Just think. Say you have a flashlight pointed at the wall and you put your hand in front of the flashlight; you get a shadow on the wall. Anyone remember that image posted on slashdot with the shadow of moon on the earth. Now we have single planet hundreds of lightyears away casting a shadow for a brief moment; covering our entire solar system, perhaps a lot more. Just think how many star systems are in this planet's shadow! All the many cubic light-years of space, probably millions, in the shadow from a single point in the sky.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Its happening. One of the greatest things I have seen is the separation of rendering engine from the application. The KDE html rendering component is being ported to bonobo and wrappers for mozilla is already underway IIRC. With HTML rendering everywhere will give GNU a truly web desktop... the right way I because of the nature of open development.
Also there is mnemonic. If you are extreme web surfer dude you won't care about mnemonic. But the mnemonic project is looking to do a very extensable browser interface. They want to do HTML, XML, TeX, MathML, etc. And I don't think it is tied to GUI.
GZilla is coming along nicely I think. Then there is Lynx which is a viable alternative right now. I use it consistantly and the only reason I use netscape occasionally is because too many web developers don't care about text-only users...
Then there is emacs/w3. I haven't been able to get this one to work but I hear it has impressive CSS support.
Just remember this when considering Bazaar development. Programmers program because it is interesting and not for production value. Just because we have two great desktops doesn't mean we won't have another superfluous desktop or ten more. Same thing goes for every other free software project. If it is interesting it will be done, how much it benefits our revolution is often beside the point.
Nothing is more important than the hack.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
The WWW Consortium got it right when they developed stylesheets. I don't care whose idea it was, it may have Microsoft's idea, who cares. But with stylesheets we can go to a page with pure structured html. That way we can render it anyway we want by putting in our own stylesheet (will mozilla have this capability?). Text-based browser can render it also. This way the web authors don't need to rely on tables and tags to make it perty.
The great thing about the WWW Consortium standards is that they do 'em the right way. Separate presentation from content is key.
I love stylesheets. I'll have to try the w3/emacs browser cause I guess it does nifty things with stylesheets, I think.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
In talking about ESRs principles I over-stepped my own principles. I turned it personal. I was speaking about the Open Source movement and fingered out ESR instead. I regret this.
But you take it too far!
You're saying that ESR is a money-grubbing phony trying to spread Linux
money-grubbing? I never said that. I never implied that (it could possibly be interpreted by my "big business buddies" comment; that was my mistake).
(and no, I don't preface it with GNU, GNU stuff can be used on any OS and isn't unique to Linux)
No no no. You don't get it. GNU IS the operating system. Linux is not an operating system, it is a kernal. But Linux is not GNU software so we call the system GNU/Linux, that is the GNU operating system plus the Linux kernal.
Think of what we use that are part of the GNU system:
The FSF has been coding the GNU OS for 15 years now. Without GNU there would be no Linux, no KDE, no 'Open Source' movement, no Red Hat, Debian, or Mandrake. Without GNU, you would be using Windows right now. Linux is a great kernal. But Linux is smaller part of the whole system. We call this operating system GNU.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
but I also feel that Communism and Open Source/Free Software have little, very little, to do with each other.
I see it this way. Open Source thinks you can separate the pragmatic from the principle. Open Source is also a tribe of marketers selling GNU/Linux to big businesses.
I personally want as little to do with Open Source as possible. Open Source is hyped too much in the media. Heck, the only reason he uses the word Open Source because he is so concerned that his big business buddies would think they couldn't sell the software.
Anyone want to start the Open Men (instead of Free Men) movement to tell the big business that they can sell people, oh wait, they can't. Oh! I see! People can distinguish free as in freedom when written before the word 'Men' but not for software, huh?
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I try to keep an open mind. But every Communist nation I know of has fallen to corruption. And I think that may be the probplem. Archimededs (I think) said that a monarchy (power of the one) is the best form of government but has so much potential for corruption. Aristocracy (power of the few) still has great potential for corruption but not so much as a monarchy. At the lower end of the spectrum is Polygomy (power of the many, or, what we call democract) where corruption is low but the government isn't very efficient.
I think the problem is design vs implementation. Marx had a noble idea, a classless society where everyone is equal. But the implementations sucks. It could be simply that the form of government that works well on paper goes to hell in practice.
I think the problem is that the government distributes the wealth. In a capitalism, virtually all of the weatlth is distributed by the people in our Free Enterprise system. This system secures against corruption because people have a choice to do business with these people or not (unless there is a monopoly which our government keeps a close eye on). This unlike communism that is an Aristocracy (power of the few) where have no choice about whether you want to do business with the government. If this government becomes corrupt, you still have to deal with them because they own all the businesses and all the wealth. By greed and selfishness, this government degrades to oppression.
Well this is my theory in any case.
***Beginning*of*Signiture*** Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the Slashdot people should be giving out awards. I think categories like "Best OS" "Largest Contribution" "Most Value" and "Most Ambitious" would be good.
Gandhi virtually invented non-violent protest. That is quite a hack giving that no one knew of doing that at the time! Martin Luther King Jr was infuenced by Gandhi and is one of the reason's the civil rights movement worked so well.
I'd definitely give Gandhi a slot on the top ten list.
A friend's brother is a hardcore gamer. I don't know what your definition of hardcore gamer is but he is what I think of by the term. His parents only let him use the internet on weekends... for good reason. He spends 12 or more hours a day playing computer games. I know I can never call during the weekend because he is tieing up the phones.
He is definetly wasting his time. The fact is that games are easy - no one gets hurt. You don't get sore. You barely use any energy by sitting on your ass all day.
And to top it off: you don't have to think about it. It is all knee-jerk reactions. No wonder the gaming industry makes so much money.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Bonobo is the GNOME component model. It is similar (albeit not as far) as the KOpenParts thingy I think. So in effect, it is a Gnome App.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I want source and I am done paying for software that comes without source code and a free license.
Its that whole freedom issue that too manny people ignore.
Look at KDE and GNOME... they are better because they are free. I would never use CDE even if it was the most pleasant looking desktop ever.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Yes. I think the good idea is to start everything from scratch. All our current toolkits is based on X and Berlin will never need toolkits. The widgets themselves can be replaced and any language can be used that has a CORBA binding.
Berlin is not as far but has the superior design. Once it gets started I think you will see development speed up.
What do you mean by wasted effort? Are you saying we should only have one windowing enviroment forever? If there was a project I was interested in developing I would work on it and I wouldn't give a damn about production value or how well it competes with Microsoft or how much it furthers the movement. I think Berlin is wholly remarkable in design. I am looking forward to a more usable release.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I have been keeping tabs on Berlin development and they most defintely will not keep an X compatible API. Berlin is ahead of its time and the whole point of the project is to go beyond what we have now with X. They have a very nice architechture and I don't think X should ruin it.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
(a) I (and many other people, I suspect) don't particularly care what Netscape Corporation thinks "the market" demands, I just want a working way to view Web pages: ie, HTML and image rendering.
You contradict yourself! YOU are part of the market! Thinking that way is a ME ME ME attitude and can't be healthy.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I wonder if they hired Linus for marketing.
But geese guys! Linus is an excellent coder from what I've heard but this reminds me way too much of the celebrity worship I despise so much in the mainstream. Now my comrades do the same in our bailiwick?
Please, say it ain't so? There isn't even anything worthwhile on the page and people already want to by one or four!
I am very skeptical with this new chip. Especially with so many people are going to fall over each other to buy one. I certainly hope everyone will wait for this chip to prove itself before we all hop on the bandwagon.
Also, think about this: Which one do you want to win? Linus the marketer or Linus the coder? In other words, let this chip be succesful on its own merits. Linus shouldn't be a factor.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I heard somewhere that unless the performance is over 50%, you won't notice it. Also note that Linux is only the kernal. Unless you are using a server for many machines, I don't think the performance boost will be apparent at all in the application, X Windows system, or desktop enviroment.
All in all, there is little incentive to compile your kernal other than to be one of the elite.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I'm sure this will get moderated down as flame bait because I disagree with the general consensus here at /.
So moderate this down to a -20, but mark my words. The arrogance of the linux community will destroy itself.
ARRRRGGGG! I hate it when people do this. Play the rebel annd show everyone you are breaking the trend. If someone moderates you down then they are evil conformosts.
I think the slashdot community is perhaps the most open minded. You wouldn't have been moderated down even without the pleeinng. And conformity is something most slashdotters dislike and you won't be demoted for being different.
Even if someone does moderate you down, slashdot has this nice moderator check to double check against unfair moderation. Beleive it or not but sometimes the system works.
Now I would like to respond to your comment. GNOME looks ten times better than Windows using a really nice theme. I do digress that Windows is faster. October GNOME is much faster than that ucky 1.0.0 release. Unless you have started Netscape, GNOME is really responsive. I think the fault lies with X because the GUI is slow even without GNOME. Then again someone commented a while ago how Windows uses hardware accels for its fine GUI performance.
You do have a point about GNOME not having simple color schemes. I wonder how difficult it would be for their to be a way to change the colors of the default theme.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I have the feeling that most of you are thinking relative to the existing business model. But if you put services first, there are some real possibilities.
Imagine you are Joe Newbie. You install GNOME and suscribe to the Support service by miguel's company. You pay a nominal fee each month. Then every other week you get a CD in the mail with various updates and bug fixes. Also you get a newsletter with various happenings in GNOME world.
Lets say that Joe newbie is having problems with Gnumeric crashing. He emails support with his problem and gets a reply that they have fixed the problem. The fix will be installed on the next CD or can be downloaded. Not only that but the fix will be distributed to all the subscribers.
Now lets say Joe Newbie wants a certain feature. Like perhaps animated icons. He emails support and they say that they will charge a fee but the fee is less for subscribers. The feature will be developed in six weeks and will come on that CD. If the feature is benificial for GNOME as a whole it will be on everyone's CD and included in the next GNOME distribution.
Gnome support could develop themes, desktop wallpaper, alternate icons, etc. They could propietize these which I don't think is against the principles of free software: they are creative works.
Many users will like this service. They always have the latest stable software.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Yeah. That was smart of them. Now they got Active desktop, web folders, HTML help, etc. in Windows 98. Even an application my mom uses uses the IE component.
But I see more potential with Free Software. Bonobo technology, for instance will let you embed graphics into the filemanager, icon lists into a spreadsheet, spreadsheets onto the desktop, etc. I think KDE is a ways ahead in this technology (I saw a screenshot of Konqueror with an embeded terrminal).
I think with Free Software, this technology will probably be used more. I think the idea of embedding things on the desktop is a very intriguing idea. Who needs wallpaper when you can embed a graphic. We can even mimic ActiveDesktop with a Mozilla or KHTML componetent.
Ah, the possibilities.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Strictly speaking, there is nothing in CSS that allows flashing or blinking.
I don't think CSS can work the way you describe. All browsers I know have compliant or incomplete CSS support. The biggest plus about CSS is that it degrades gracefully. The HTML itself is very standard: P, TABLE, IMG, EM, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, H@, etc. So if you view the page with a browser with CSS, you get nice looking web page. Without CSS support the page looks like nothing less than regular boring HTML with all content (which a lot of people prefer).
I must digress that the pixel-based layout in CSS does scare me. I think pixel-based anything is a bad idea... limits the resolution people can view the page in.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Usually when different people are separated they don't get along to well when together. Us people in the United States don't think to highly of China and that is mostly because we don't know or see any Chinese a lot. And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
Now reading the above comments I notice that there are many respectful comments posted here. Virtually all respectful comments. Good. This means the internet is doing its job.
Because the internet is an international medium we talk to foreign people on a daily basis. My history teachers says the best way to do away with prejudice is bring these people together. That is exactly what is happening.
Oh! What a great world we live in!
I just wanted to point this out.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Just think. Say you have a flashlight pointed at the wall and you put your hand in front of the flashlight; you get a shadow on the wall. Anyone remember that image posted on slashdot with the shadow of moon on the earth. Now we have single planet hundreds of lightyears away casting a shadow for a brief moment; covering our entire solar system, perhaps a lot more. Just think how many star systems are in this planet's shadow! All the many cubic light-years of space, probably millions, in the shadow from a single point in the sky.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Its happening. One of the greatest things I have seen is the separation of rendering engine from the application. The KDE html rendering component is being ported to bonobo and wrappers for mozilla is already underway IIRC. With HTML rendering everywhere will give GNU a truly web desktop... the right way I because of the nature of open development.
Also there is mnemonic. If you are extreme web surfer dude you won't care about mnemonic. But the mnemonic project is looking to do a very extensable browser interface. They want to do HTML, XML, TeX, MathML, etc. And I don't think it is tied to GUI.
GZilla is coming along nicely I think. Then there is Lynx which is a viable alternative right now. I use it consistantly and the only reason I use netscape occasionally is because too many web developers don't care about text-only users...
Then there is emacs/w3. I haven't been able to get this one to work but I hear it has impressive CSS support.
Just remember this when considering Bazaar development. Programmers program because it is interesting and not for production value. Just because we have two great desktops doesn't mean we won't have another superfluous desktop or ten more. Same thing goes for every other free software project. If it is interesting it will be done, how much it benefits our revolution is often beside the point.
Nothing is more important than the hack.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
The WWW Consortium got it right when they developed stylesheets. I don't care whose idea it was, it may have Microsoft's idea, who cares. But with stylesheets we can go to a page with pure structured html. That way we can render it anyway we want by putting in our own stylesheet (will mozilla have this capability?). Text-based browser can render it also. This way the web authors don't need to rely on tables and tags to make it perty.
The great thing about the WWW Consortium standards is that they do 'em the right way. Separate presentation from content is key.
I love stylesheets. I'll have to try the w3/emacs browser cause I guess it does nifty things with stylesheets, I think.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Anybody remember the days when we were all excited to get a mention in the trade press?
:(
Man! we're obsessed!
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Yeah, jeopardy was wrong but was is the contestant suppose to question?
"What is the GNU... uh... Lignu.. hmmm... Oh! What is GNU's Not Linux!"
I guess Linux is correct. One could have a liberal definition of 'system' I guess.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
GNU propaganda :)
You have a good point though. I'll cut it out. I just had to get something out of my system.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Propaganda? Or supporting a statement. The world may never know...
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
But you take it too far!
You're saying that ESR is a money-grubbing phony trying to spread Linux
money-grubbing? I never said that. I never implied that (it could possibly be interpreted by my "big business buddies" comment; that was my mistake).
(and no, I don't preface it with GNU, GNU stuff can be used on any OS and isn't unique to Linux)
No no no. You don't get it. GNU IS the operating system. Linux is not an operating system, it is a kernal. But Linux is not GNU software so we call the system GNU/Linux, that is the GNU operating system plus the Linux kernal.
Think of what we use that are part of the GNU system:
The FSF has been coding the GNU OS for 15 years now. Without GNU there would be no Linux, no KDE, no 'Open Source' movement, no Red Hat, Debian, or Mandrake. Without GNU, you would be using Windows right now. Linux is a great kernal. But Linux is smaller part of the whole system. We call this operating system GNU.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
but I also feel that Communism and Open Source/Free Software have little, very little, to do with each other.
I see it this way. Open Source thinks you can separate the pragmatic from the principle. Open Source is also a tribe of marketers selling GNU/Linux to big businesses.
I personally want as little to do with Open Source as possible. Open Source is hyped too much in the media. Heck, the only reason he uses the word Open Source because he is so concerned that his big business buddies would think they couldn't sell the software.
Anyone want to start the Open Men (instead of Free Men) movement to tell the big business that they can sell people, oh wait, they can't. Oh! I see! People can distinguish free as in freedom when written before the word 'Men' but not for software, huh?
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
I try to keep an open mind. But every Communist nation I know of has fallen to corruption. And I think that may be the probplem. Archimededs (I think) said that a monarchy (power of the one) is the best form of government but has so much potential for corruption. Aristocracy (power of the few) still has great potential for corruption but not so much as a monarchy. At the lower end of the spectrum is Polygomy (power of the many, or, what we call democract) where corruption is low but the government isn't very efficient.
I think the problem is design vs implementation. Marx had a noble idea, a classless society where everyone is equal. But the implementations sucks. It could be simply that the form of government that works well on paper goes to hell in practice.
I think the problem is that the government distributes the wealth. In a capitalism, virtually all of the weatlth is distributed by the people in our Free Enterprise system. This system secures against corruption because people have a choice to do business with these people or not (unless there is a monopoly which our government keeps a close eye on). This unlike communism that is an Aristocracy (power of the few) where have no choice about whether you want to do business with the government. If this government becomes corrupt, you still have to deal with them because they own all the businesses and all the wealth. By greed and selfishness, this government degrades to oppression.
Well this is my theory in any case.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!