I think it is not a coincidence that George Orwell was British.
People in this country come in opinion polls as very supportive of intrusive ideas like ID cards, DNA databases and all other kind of intrusive powers.
It is funny how East European migrants explain to the locals very often how much those measures remind them of the good old days pre Berlin Wall fall.
But they are alienating their main clients: Solaris users.
For somebody that has made a living from Solaris for several years, the message could not be more ominous: don't use Solaris, not even ourselves can be arsed to support it.
If MS is having it so great why investors have driven its share price to the floor?
If MS is sitting pretty why do they need to embarrass themselves trying to buy Yahoo instead of fixing their own search engine? Or why do they do "protection" (like mafia bosses) deal with Novell and other Linux companies while at the same time launching not so subtle threats of patent trolling?
Lets not forget neither that MS has now half the cash they used to have, so they are hemorraging it like there is no tomorrow.
I frankly don't understand your rosy vision of MS's situation. A company of such size has a lot of inertia, heck, many banks last year where performing like champs and look where they are now.
MS has problems, the bosses know it, but I do not think they really know how to address them...
While MS and hardware manufacturers drop support for perfectly usable hardware Linux will pick up support for them at some point and the support will rarely be removed.
Now, if you talk about new hardware, then yes, Linux may support less devices, but you can still get perfectly working systems (here I include peripherals of all kind) if you stick to dvices using open or documented standards (for example almost all USB disks will work out of the box with Linux, because given the nature of the device it has to work with different OSes, and thus MS has not been able to steal the specification, not yet at least).
Now it is an acknowledged 1.1% of a massive market.
I say this as somebody that has installed several Ubuntu machines for family and friends. I wonder how many people like us are not showing on that statistic.
Empirical UK centred tidbit: there are 3 major Linux magazines readily available in shops (Linux Format, Linux Magazine, Linux User) and there is only one for Apple fan boys (MacUser). There must be a market out there that is not necessarily entering the marketing statistics but that can be gauged by other means.
I know it doesn't look like that now, but big companies and governments are challenging very seriously the wisdom of having their data controlled by third parties.
If you really are that good as to achieve point #1 you have an assured career writing software, so licensing issues would become the least of your worries. If you aren't really that good, well, you will get paid to fix your mistakes or to provide improvements to your product.
Notice that you are not entitled to that. You have to show commitment, financial prudence and good marketing skills.
In other words you need good business acumen, this is something people going into business have always known, geeks somehow tend to forget that very simple premise.
As for somebody else redistributing your project, look, you had one year head start lets say. If your project is worth re-selling, who should be best posed to profit from that?: You, who know the innards of the project, or the guy that put it in a website or a CD and charged for that?
If you don't manage to become the recognized authority for a useful piece of software you wrote, then you have to bow to the entrepreneurial abilities of others.
Writing software, whatever the licensing terms, is just part of a coherent business model, you go into business without one at your peril.
In step 3 you make it sound like people developing FLOSS put out something and then sit and relax waiting for the money to flow in.
Red Hat for example is a major contributor to the software they sell and support, since they are true insiders it is much easier for them to monetize step 4.
Why should one single product satisfy the needs of everybody?
In normal markets you have many different products targeting different niches in the market, only monopolies can ever dream to cater to the needs of all their users at the same time, if they are interested about that at all (how long it took for MS to instil some new life into IE? )
The top 10 or 20% of the populous will be doing great.
Is is the 10 0r 20% at the bottom who will struggle.
Even if your industry completely disappears you are more likely to have made some saving or to have assets and stuff to sell.
For the poorest people recession started the moment they were made redundant and they found out that 20 years driving a truck or handling an utlraspecialized machine in a manufacturing plant just puts them on the street with tens of thousands of folks exactly like them (and these are the lucky ones, pray for those whose only skill is burger flipping).
1.- Selection method: select people that can pay, if we have too many then we select amongst them.
2.- The parents take par in the kids education? How it comes? They don't work or what? Oh, I get it, working class people don't love their kids, that is a privileged trait...
3.- Sure, expel a paying pupil. Don't make me laugh.
4.- They are trying to save costs, thus employ so-so teachers.
5.- See 4.
A few private schools are very good and have a reputation to uphold, but most of them are really horrible places and parents are deluded when they think that paying more is necessarily a guarantee of a good education....
I did not finish Uni because I was snapped up by a big corp due to my skills before I had a chance to finish my degree. I would have loved to finish it, but world hopping is not very conducive to this, so I gave it a miss...
Many moons later I still don't have a degree, I really don't need it any more.
In an interview situation I would put your offer under the microscope before deciding if I want to work with (not for) you. I can tell you without any shade of irony that I have more choices of good companies that you have of good candidates for a position in my field, so if being in a weak negotiating position you would pull the "have you got a degree" nonsense in front of me you would lose me, to the detriment of your organization.
My advice is not to be dogmatic.
Obtaining formal education is a good indicator of character, all other things being equal, the fact is that normally all the things that should matter to differentiate candidates aren't equal 99% of the time, thus Uni education is a differentiator that clever hirers use rarely.
Thus it is not like you can move bricks from one place to put them somewhere else to fill a hole.
Space Invaders code is so widespread now that I am sure implementing such prank would not take substantial amount of time from any proficient programmer anyway.
I will not even go into the moral authority of users when it comes to demanding things from developers doing a solid piece of work that is free and that has improved greatly in the last few years.
Gosh, life is so grim for some people out there...
In civilized countries only junkies and alcoholics don't eat or have a roof over their heads (if the US is civilized is open to discussion, they don't even have socialized health care).
If you live in Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan then yeah, your are fucked if you lose your job, but an British, German or Japanese person worrying about going hungry or homeless is frankly ridiculous, I don't know about the US, but I did not see any shanty towns the few times I was there (although it seems some are goring outside some towns in Texas....)
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10%? OK, then can have it, for all the others is Ubuntu and I saved lots of money.
Honestly, enough excuses, people not considering alternatives to Windows are perpetrating a dereliction of duty on their jobs.
Or a central machine running Windows to which I connect remotely from my Ubuntu home machine via a VPN.
By doing this I save my company a full set of licenses of commercial software that would be otherwise cluttering the innards of my poor laptop.
I do apologize about the typo...
Many internal applications are not web based.
In many instances the only MS software you need is Windows, Office and if you are a masochist SharePoint.
I am sure Ubuntu is not charging the same MS demand for a desktop and its associated software....
As for server software, well, MS is not driving the Internet.
Proof please.
Being big does not equal being predatory.
I think it is not a coincidence that George Orwell was British.
People in this country come in opinion polls as very supportive of intrusive ideas like ID cards, DNA databases and all other kind of intrusive powers.
It is funny how East European migrants explain to the locals very often how much those measures remind them of the good old days pre Berlin Wall fall.
And still people in the UK will not get it...
But they are alienating their main clients: Solaris users.
For somebody that has made a living from Solaris for several years, the message could not be more ominous: don't use Solaris, not even ourselves can be arsed to support it.
Nice one Sun, nice one.
I want to catch a rocket there.
If MS is having it so great why investors have driven its share price to the floor?
If MS is sitting pretty why do they need to embarrass themselves trying to buy Yahoo instead of fixing their own search engine? Or why do they do "protection" (like mafia bosses) deal with Novell and other Linux companies while at the same time launching not so subtle threats of patent trolling?
Lets not forget neither that MS has now half the cash they used to have, so they are hemorraging it like there is no tomorrow.
I frankly don't understand your rosy vision of MS's situation. A company of such size has a lot of inertia, heck, many banks last year where performing like champs and look where they are now.
MS has problems, the bosses know it, but I do not think they really know how to address them...
Here in the UK Currys and PCWorld amongst others are selling these alongside Windows laptops.
These shops have the pulse in what is going mainstream, if they are selling them this means they are no longer the preserve of the geek.
While MS and hardware manufacturers drop support for perfectly usable hardware Linux will pick up support for them at some point and the support will rarely be removed.
Now, if you talk about new hardware, then yes, Linux may support less devices, but you can still get perfectly working systems (here I include peripherals of all kind) if you stick to dvices using open or documented standards (for example almost all USB disks will work out of the box with Linux, because given the nature of the device it has to work with different OSes, and thus MS has not been able to steal the specification, not yet at least).
Now it is an acknowledged 1.1% of a massive market.
I say this as somebody that has installed several Ubuntu machines for family and friends. I wonder how many people like us are not showing on that statistic.
Empirical UK centred tidbit: there are 3 major Linux magazines readily available in shops (Linux Format, Linux Magazine, Linux User) and there is only one for Apple fan boys (MacUser). There must be a market out there that is not necessarily entering the marketing statistics but that can be gauged by other means.
I know it doesn't look like that now, but big companies and governments are challenging very seriously the wisdom of having their data controlled by third parties.
Enjoy the ride, it will not last forever.
If you really are that good as to achieve point #1 you have an assured career writing software, so licensing issues would become the least of your worries. If you aren't really that good, well, you will get paid to fix your mistakes or to provide improvements to your product.
Notice that you are not entitled to that. You have to show commitment, financial prudence and good marketing skills.
In other words you need good business acumen, this is something people going into business have always known, geeks somehow tend to forget that very simple premise.
As for somebody else redistributing your project, look, you had one year head start lets say. If your project is worth re-selling, who should be best posed to profit from that?: You, who know the innards of the project, or the guy that put it in a website or a CD and charged for that?
If you don't manage to become the recognized authority for a useful piece of software you wrote, then you have to bow to the entrepreneurial abilities of others.
Writing software, whatever the licensing terms, is just part of a coherent business model, you go into business without one at your peril.
If you make a product that is so perfect (now, something I would want to see one day) well, maybe.
Now point me to such products and lets see if there really is no space for improvement.
... is not a guarantee of insigthfulness.
In step 3 you make it sound like people developing FLOSS put out something and then sit and relax waiting for the money to flow in.
Red Hat for example is a major contributor to the software they sell and support, since they are true insiders it is much easier for them to monetize step 4.
Otherwise their share price would not be crap.
Why should one single product satisfy the needs of everybody?
In normal markets you have many different products targeting different niches in the market, only monopolies can ever dream to cater to the needs of all their users at the same time, if they are interested about that at all (how long it took for MS to instil some new life into IE? )
The top 10 or 20% of the populous will be doing great.
Is is the 10 0r 20% at the bottom who will struggle.
Even if your industry completely disappears you are more likely to have made some saving or to have assets and stuff to sell.
For the poorest people recession started the moment they were made redundant and they found out that 20 years driving a truck or handling an utlraspecialized machine in a manufacturing plant just puts them on the street with tens of thousands of folks exactly like them (and these are the lucky ones, pray for those whose only skill is burger flipping).
The problem is if you lower the standards.
I have no problem to see everybody passes as long as the standard by which they are judged is reasonably high.
Private schools:
1.- Selection method: select people that can pay, if we have too many then we select amongst them.
2.- The parents take par in the kids education? How it comes? They don't work or what? Oh, I get it, working class people don't love their kids, that is a privileged trait...
3.- Sure, expel a paying pupil. Don't make me laugh.
4.- They are trying to save costs, thus employ so-so teachers.
5.- See 4.
A few private schools are very good and have a reputation to uphold, but most of them are really horrible places and parents are deluded when they think that paying more is necessarily a guarantee of a good education....
You sell less you need less people, you do so to keep the company profitable.
Honestly, in which planet are you living?
Many folks here are talking about HR departments.
Ha! Companies with a few employees will not have such luxury. That is the place where you can start and where you have got a better chance.
Build your expertise, get some certifications and you will be where you want sooner than you think.
I did not finish Uni because I was snapped up by a big corp due to my skills before I had a chance to finish my degree. I would have loved to finish it, but world hopping is not very conducive to this, so I gave it a miss...
Many moons later I still don't have a degree, I really don't need it any more.
In an interview situation I would put your offer under the microscope before deciding if I want to work with (not for) you. I can tell you without any shade of irony that I have more choices of good companies that you have of good candidates for a position in my field, so if being in a weak negotiating position you would pull the "have you got a degree" nonsense in front of me you would lose me, to the detriment of your organization.
My advice is not to be dogmatic.
Obtaining formal education is a good indicator of character, all other things being equal, the fact is that normally all the things that should matter to differentiate candidates aren't equal 99% of the time, thus Uni education is a differentiator that clever hirers use rarely.
Thus it is not like you can move bricks from one place to put them somewhere else to fill a hole.
Space Invaders code is so widespread now that I am sure implementing such prank would not take substantial amount of time from any proficient programmer anyway.
I will not even go into the moral authority of users when it comes to demanding things from developers doing a solid piece of work that is free and that has improved greatly in the last few years.
Gosh, life is so grim for some people out there ...
In civilized countries only junkies and alcoholics don't eat or have a roof over their heads (if the US is civilized is open to discussion, they don't even have socialized health care).
If you live in Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan then yeah, your are fucked if you lose your job, but an British, German or Japanese person worrying about going hungry or homeless is frankly ridiculous, I don't know about the US, but I did not see any shanty towns the few times I was there (although it seems some are goring outside some towns in Texas....)