Users of Open Source save money and are so able to spend money elsewhere. Thus there are less jobs in software companies but more jobs in software using companies. Since software people are highly paid there are probably more jobs created than are lost.
Open Source results in jobs being transferred from Software companies to End user companies.
This is a short write up of the event. Alain Williams wrote it & received comments from Phil Hands and Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton.
The MS announcement http://www.microsoft.co.uk/events/Ms EStdEventDisp. asp?params=fHx8fDB8bXNldmVudHN8MHww&EventID=80 61
****
All that you ever wanted to know about Linux but were afraid to ask.
Officially called:
20:20 Seminar Series: Microsoft Windows and Linux An open and honest technology discussion
How is MicroSoft presenting Linux to its customers ? We need to know so that we can be ready for the challenge. MicroSoft is an important competitor, we cannot afford to ignore it, we cannot just dismiss it with a smile of smug superiority
The undersigned were at the above MicroSoft presentation in London, England on 10 June 2004. This is not a literal report, more an attempt to extract the ideas of what was said as sound bites.
There were some 300 delegates, about 90% wearing suits. MicroSoft was well aware that many Linux types were present.
This was a carefully scripted event with someone acting like a TV chat show host. The banter and 'off the cuff' jokes (it is a good idea to keep your contact list of girlfriends protected from your wife) were well rehearsed.
First part: presentations
Philip Dawson - Senior Program Director - Meta Group
. Open Office is incomplete and incompatible. . Have to repackage when the kernel changes. . Difficult to replace MS support with Linux equivalent . Cost of ongoing integration & support . Desktop:
* lacks ecosystem (exchange, active directory, office, 3rd party divers & apps)
* lack of admin tools
* requires ITO to do something
* desktop is about breadth, Linux is narrow . Much of Linux uptake is Unix -> Linux migration, little Windows -> Linux . The costs between Linux and Windows balance out when you buy RedHat/SuSE (Debian is
not suitable for the enterprise because there is no support). . Should focus on services . Problems with the different Open Sources licenses - if you want to base an app on Linux
you need to understand all the different licenses otherwise you will get into trouble. . The Operating System is not comoditised, the battle is on the application stack, this
is where the focus is. . Beware the corporate IP threat:
* You may loose control of your own written applications
* Liabilities from use of open source (eg SCO) (I think he said this) . If you deploy Active Directory do not deploy Samba . Moving shell scripts Unix -> Linux is difficult (ie so why not move to Windows) . There is no hardware saving if you deploy Windows or Linux - ie the same number of boxes needed. . He dismissed, as largely irrelevant, all hardware platforms other than Intel compatible ones. . There were several other cheap jibes that showed ignorance but which would be taken
as true by many who are not familiar with Linux. . Don't look at the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), look at the ROI (Return On Investment). . MySql is incomplete and does not scale. Don't compare MySql to MS-SQL, but it would be rude to MS Access
to compare MySql to it.
Nick Barley - Directory of Marketing - Microsoft UK
. Boardroom Boredom. Most boards don't really care about IT, they regard it as a cost that
never really delivers on what it promises. . Why MS ? : "We make the complex simple" . MS provides simple packages apps. . "Its free v MS" is a not true headline, you need to look at the TCO. . Linux cost has moved to the same as the MS model - RedHat charges now . Ecosystem buzzword was used again, MS has a lot of partners: integrators, ISVs,... . With MS you get the software all from one place, with Linux if comes from all over,
he quoted Larry Ellison (I think) ''if you saw an airplane with wings made by differ
The hybrid source model negatively impacts the intellectual property model for all software, and inevitably the entire IT economy. As long as the
value of the IT economy is dependent on the preservation of intellectual property, it is counterproductive for the U.S. government to invest in Linux.
This is the key to M$ concerns, it wants to maintain the benefits to the small number of companies in the IT sector. Open Source is about bringing benefits to everyone.
M$ wants to get richer by everyone giving it money to use it's software.
Open Source permits everyone to get richer by not having to give money to use software.
(OK - I know the other benefits of libre software, but that is for another day.)
Better than just text copy/cut and paste
on
The GNOME Roadmap
·
· Score: 1
I note that:
Improved cut and paste/drag and drop format documentation, to allow better interoperability in this area.
is long term, this is highly important, a lot of people that want to do things like copy an image from the web browser and paste it into the word processor, etc, and it doesn't work. Having to save to a file and then insert from a file just isn't good enough.
Anyway: that is what I thought the ome of Gnome stood for.
Above there are many arguments/illustrations for one or the other. Linux is used in a very wide variety of systems - to meet different technical and budget criteria, some will need swap, some won't.
You have the choice - configure according to your needs.
This is absolutely brilliant, I shall add it to the list of examples that I talk about when I try to convince people that HTML email is bad for security/privacy and has few real advantages over plain text.
I realised this when I was looking for a 17" LCD for my dad. What I wanted was 1024x786, he doesn't need more pixels but bigger ones - his eyesight isn't that good any more.
The ability to change scan rate is the advantage of glass monitors; shame that they are so big, heavy & hot.
The problem is that the state is running out of money - they propose to fix it by increasing taxes, something that they can do since they are effectivly a monopoly in the geographic area.
If I have a budget problem, I might try to charge my customers more; but I will probably cut back on what I do or choose cheaper suppliers.
How much money would the state save if it moved all its office systems from Microsoft to Linux ?
They need to keep the indexes in memory for fast searching, they don't need to keep the cache in RAM. Similarily: for images they only need keep the keywords, the imgage itself can live on disk -- it isn't going to be needed very often.
Their mail system - why keep mail in RAM ? Only one person is going to be interested in reading it, normal disk is plenty fast enough for that - OK, they might temporarily cache subject lines/... once someone loggs in, but I can't see the need to keep the entire message in RAM.
If I look carefully, I can see that the borders of the windows inside the Opera window change a little bit depending on the focus. Emacs and xterm still run fine, but everything that has Gtk or Qt is slow as hell.
I have long been of the opinion that the Gnome/KDE developers should be forced to use a P450 as their desktop - that would result in fast/efficient/bloat_less code, or at least we would see a fast mode option where most of the eye candy is switched off.
The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.
Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.
I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
After signing in, each voter received a ticket bearing his or her precinct number and party affiliation from a poll worker.
What is this about party affiliation? Is that talking about political parties? The way that I read that is that the ticket issued by the worker somehow contains information about the political party that the voter is (presumably) disposed to vote for. If that is true then it is anything but a secret ballot.
I suspect (and hope) that I have misunderstood something here -- can someone please explain.
I had my car serviced today. I used a mechanic who has a small garage somewhere, he is much cheaper than a main dealer and has easily fixed problems that the dealer many times tried and failed (at my expense).
He was complaining that the cost of the analysis/diagnosis machines that modern cars have (plug the car in & it tells you what needs fixing) is prohibitive for him, and each model in a range will have a slightly different plug - that you have to buy afresh.
The result will be the financial death of my mechanic as I will eventually be forced to go to the more expensive (but no better) main dealers.
We need Open Specification engine management systems to ensure that competition survives.
This is interesting: it is not something that I really care enough about to make me want to do something; which puts me in a similar position to most people on the subject of operating systems: they might see the sense of Open Specifications (or Standards or Source) but do not really care enough to do much about it.
I wonder how they'll cite us in the papers they publish?
What would be more interesting is to search/. discussions as a means of showing that an idea is not novel, having been published before, and so cannot be patented.
Slashdot Mirror
Users of Open Source save money and are so able to spend money elsewhere. Thus there are less jobs in software companies but more jobs in software using companies. Since software people are highly paid there are probably more jobs created than are lost.
Open Source results in jobs being transferred from Software companies to End user companies.
Is MS going to use that as ''proof'' that the browser market does have competition and thus MS is not a monopolistic company ?
Mind you: it doesn't really need to do that since it got let off the hook when Bush got elected.
It seems to me that you should be looking for lists of current job adverts - text to speech if you really want to listen to something ?
This is a short write up of the event. Alain Williams wrote it & .
...
received comments from Phil Hands and Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
The MS announcement
http://www.microsoft.co.uk/events/Ms EStdEventDisp. asp?params=fHx8fDB8bXNldmVudHN8MHww&EventID=80 61
****
All that you ever wanted to know about Linux but were afraid to ask.
Officially called:
20:20 Seminar Series: Microsoft Windows and Linux An open and honest technology discussion
How is MicroSoft presenting Linux to its customers ? We need to know so that we can be ready for
the challenge. MicroSoft is an important competitor, we cannot afford to ignore it, we cannot
just dismiss it with a smile of smug superiority
The undersigned were at the above MicroSoft presentation in London, England on 10 June 2004.
This is not a literal report, more an attempt to extract the ideas of what was said as sound bites.
There were some 300 delegates, about 90% wearing suits. MicroSoft was well aware that many
Linux types were present.
This was a carefully scripted event with someone acting like a TV chat show host. The banter and
'off the cuff' jokes (it is a good idea to keep your contact list of girlfriends protected from your wife)
were well rehearsed.
First part: presentations
Philip Dawson - Senior Program Director - Meta Group
. Open Office is incomplete and incompatible.
. Have to repackage when the kernel changes.
. Difficult to replace MS support with Linux equivalent
. Cost of ongoing integration & support
. Desktop:
* lacks ecosystem (exchange, active directory, office, 3rd party divers & apps)
* lack of admin tools
* requires ITO to do something
* desktop is about breadth, Linux is narrow
. Much of Linux uptake is Unix -> Linux migration, little Windows -> Linux
. The costs between Linux and Windows balance out when you buy RedHat/SuSE (Debian is
not suitable for the enterprise because there is no support).
. Should focus on services
. Problems with the different Open Sources licenses - if you want to base an app on Linux
you need to understand all the different licenses otherwise you will get into trouble.
. The Operating System is not comoditised, the battle is on the application stack, this
is where the focus is.
. Beware the corporate IP threat:
* You may loose control of your own written applications
* Liabilities from use of open source (eg SCO) (I think he said this)
. If you deploy Active Directory do not deploy Samba
. Moving shell scripts Unix -> Linux is difficult (ie so why not move to Windows)
. There is no hardware saving if you deploy Windows or Linux - ie the same number of boxes needed.
. He dismissed, as largely irrelevant, all hardware platforms other than Intel compatible ones.
. There were several other cheap jibes that showed ignorance but which would be taken
as true by many who are not familiar with Linux.
. Don't look at the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), look at the ROI (Return On Investment).
. MySql is incomplete and does not scale. Don't compare MySql to MS-SQL, but it would be rude to MS Access
to compare MySql to it.
Nick Barley - Directory of Marketing - Microsoft UK
. Boardroom Boredom. Most boards don't really care about IT, they regard it as a cost that
never really delivers on what it promises.
. Why MS ? : "We make the complex simple"
. MS provides simple packages apps.
. "Its free v MS" is a not true headline, you need to look at the TCO.
. Linux cost has moved to the same as the MS model - RedHat charges now
. Ecosystem buzzword was used again, MS has a lot of partners: integrators, ISVs,
. With MS you get the software all from one place, with Linux if comes from all over,
he quoted Larry Ellison (I think) ''if you saw an airplane with wings made by differ
Anyone any idea why they always send these things out in CAPITALS ?
I doubt that it is stupidity (that accolade belongs to those who reply), but I suspect that there may be some kind on Nigerian cultural thing.
If only NASA had fitted the tyre grips used by James Bond in 'Die Another Day', it is not as if they cost a lot .
This is the key to M$ concerns, it wants to maintain the benefits to the small number of companies in the IT sector. Open Source is about bringing benefits to everyone.
M$ wants to get richer by everyone giving it money to use it's software.
Open Source permits everyone to get richer by not having to give money to use software.
(OK - I know the other benefits of libre software, but that is for another day.)
is long term, this is highly important, a lot of people that want to do things like copy an image from the web browser and paste it into the word processor, etc, and it doesn't work. Having to save to a file and then insert from a file just isn't good enough.
Anyway: that is what I thought the ome of Gnome stood for.
Great shame that they didn't post it as a MS word document having just blacked out the offending sections. What did you say about an undo facility ?
Above there are many arguments/illustrations for one or the other. Linux is used in a very wide variety of systems - to meet different technical and budget criteria, some will need swap, some won't.
You have the choice - configure according to your needs.
This is absolutely brilliant, I shall add it to the list of examples that I talk about when I try to convince people that HTML email is bad for security/privacy and has few real advantages over plain text.
I realised this when I was looking for a 17" LCD for my dad. What I wanted was 1024x786, he doesn't need more pixels but bigger ones - his eyesight isn't that good any more.
The ability to change scan rate is the advantage of glass monitors; shame that they are so big, heavy & hot.
The problem is that the state is running out of money - they propose to fix it by increasing taxes, something that they can do since they are effectivly a monopoly in the geographic area.
If I have a budget problem, I might try to charge my customers more; but I will probably cut back on what I do or choose cheaper suppliers.
How much money would the state save if it moved all its office systems from Microsoft to Linux ?
They need to keep the indexes in memory for fast searching, they don't need to keep the cache in RAM.
Similarily: for images they only need keep the keywords, the imgage itself can live on disk -- it isn't going to be needed very often.
Their mail system - why keep mail in RAM ? Only one person is going to be interested in reading it, normal disk is plenty fast enough for that - OK, they might temporarily cache subject lines/... once someone loggs in, but I can't see the need to keep the entire message in RAM.
* of servers in the world
* of servers in the USA
* of servers running Linux
A binary bit holds one piece of information, it has two states but is still only one bit (piece) of information.
I now understand why USA citizens are so fat.
So that earlier noise about it closing was not it's SwanSong after all.
What I want to know is: has this Guiness World record holder got enough capacity to store a copy of the Guiness Book of Records ?
I have long been of the opinion that the Gnome/KDE developers should be forced to use a P450 as their desktop - that would result in fast/efficient/bloat_less code, or at least we would see a fast mode option where most of the eye candy is switched off.
The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.
Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.
I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
What is this about party affiliation? Is that talking about political parties? The way that I read that is that the ticket issued by the worker somehow contains information about the political party that the voter is (presumably) disposed to vote for. If that is true then it is anything but a secret ballot.
I suspect (and hope) that I have misunderstood something here -- can someone please explain.
This is getting to be like a 3rd class movie where the bad guys start making stupid mistakes so that the heros can 'outwit' them.
Anyone got a picture of Darl ? I want to see if he is wearing a black hat.
I had my car serviced today. I used a mechanic who has a small garage somewhere, he is much cheaper than a main dealer and has easily fixed problems that the dealer many times tried and failed (at my expense).
He was complaining that the cost of the analysis/diagnosis machines that modern cars have (plug the car in & it tells you what needs fixing) is prohibitive for him, and each model in a range will have a slightly different plug - that you have to buy afresh.
The result will be the financial death of my mechanic as I will eventually be forced to go to the more expensive (but no better) main dealers.
We need Open Specification engine management systems to ensure that competition survives.
This is interesting: it is not something that I really care enough about to make me want to do something; which puts me in a similar position to most people on the subject of operating systems: they might see the sense of Open Specifications (or Standards or Source) but do not really care enough to do much about it.
Interesting to see the fence from the other side!
What would be more interesting is to search /. discussions as a means of showing that an idea is not novel, having been published before, and so cannot be patented.