I loved this posting!! I enjoyed a good gut-wrenching guffaw for a good ten minutes when I read it. I can picture the tweaking in my mind, just like some Monty Python skit. Very well said, very insightful, and very hilarious. I wish this were moderated up a few spots.
I'm glad we've come to a meeting of the minds. Your response was satisfying to read, you had many good points of your own. If the developers in a mailing list said they used that code, that's about as first-hand as you can get. I will qibble with you on one point, however.
It's about good and easy. Easy GUI's for the routine stuff, powerful CLI's for the hard stuff. And perhaps eventually, we'll figure away to get the expressiveness of a CLI into a GUI.
Okay, your first statement I can believe, but the second? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Think about it. Piping, command-line flags, varying argument structures, outputs from executions as arguments, ASCII output/log files parsed and processed by Awk, Sed, and Perl...you'll never be able to wrap that kind of power into a GUI. In the end, a GUI will always amount to click,drag,&drop, select, unselect, etc. Its the flexibility, brevity, and arcane nature of the command line which gives it such power. If that wasn't the case, UNIX would never have evolved in the way that it did. Remember, this is an OS which has been around for 30 years, developed by thoughtful and introspective academics, inventive industrialist researchers, and various computer gods. Allow me to quote from The O'Reilly book "Essential System Administration", page 18, in the subsection Menus and Icons Aren't Enough, "Somebody has to know how things really work....administrative tools [GUIs] are designed for routine operations under normal system conditions, and this assumption is interwoven into their structure, often down to the last detail. When the system is in trouble, and these assumptions no longer hold, the tools often break down completely....In the end, you need to know how things really work."
So I say it's not about good and easy. It's about Outstanding Quality and Knowing How Things Work. In UNIX, that's been the underlying design assumption, and attempting to merge that with the Macintosh philosophy of Everything Can Be Easy for Everyone is just doomed to disaster.
Actually, I would point out that the personalities of these two leaders are in many ways the *source* of the differences between the two technologies. No, Linus did not invent UNIX, but he's got the UNIX mindframe. His instigation of Linux and his choice to make it open-source are derived from who he is, what makes him tick. IE, his personality. He could have easily have been able to get together with some friends, build Linux without newsgroup help, incorporate, and sell proprietary binaries of Linux cheap, just like Bill did with BASIC for the Altair in 1975. It is concievable such could have happened without open source, or perhaps some open-source variation on that theme. The bottom line is, it was Linus' personality which largely influenced the nature of Linux culture, and continues to today.
The same goes for Windows. Highly proprietary means the owner has *complete* control. If you learn or know anything about Bill's history, you'll see he was brought up to be intensely competitive. He seems to have an adolescent need to dominate. This is doubtlessly what made him into the huge business success he is, and why he wants every PC on every desktop to be running only his (thus Microsoft's) software, from operating system to userland programs.
The same arguments could be extended to Apple and Steve Jobs, but I won't go into that here. Anyone who knows the history of the two entities, the man and the company (and products), will see that my arguments apply here.
So when you get down to it, the OS cultures that exist today are, in many ways, cults of personality. Each and everyone of us gravitates to the OS and culture which we feel most comfortable with. It is very important, however, to recognize that these cultures originate from a single, strong personality who drove the software creation and led the development community early on, and typically still do today.
You're also toeing the line dangerously close to Godwin's law, with your silly rants about "Sovietism". Grow up, please.
Alright, I admit I may have had rant switched on without realizing it, and for that I apologize. Godwin's Law is a good point, but I was attempting to make a point with the Soviet remark. My point was simply that by casting decision-making and problem-solving choices into dialog boxes, dropdown lists, radio boxes, OK buttons and so forth, the OS manufacturers rob the user/administrator of the option to make creative solutions to problems. It was actually an analogy I borrowed from Thomas Scoville's article "Elements of Style: UNIX as Literature". He was discussing NT, but if you'll read the article, you'll clearly see how I thought his analogy applied directly to OS X.
By the by, your calling me to the mat on Godwin's Law was quite appropriate, but let's bag phrases like "grow up". No reason to get personal just because someone feels passionate about something.
like FreeBSD. However, your "several years ahead" of the old BSD 4.4 system argument is flawed, considering MacOS X uses FreeBSD (and NetBSD) code, plus its own enhancements drawn from almost TEN YEARS of experience with Mach (the NeXT boys DO work at Apple now, remember?)
You'll pardon me good sir, but where did you get this information? Certainly not from Apple, in their white papers, they claim OS X to be based on BSD 4.4 and Mach 2.5, but make no claim to possessing Net or Free BSD code in their system. The terms "based on" to me say that their arcitecture is based largely on the old 4.4 release. I stand by my original statement, but would be happy to retract if you can find me a reliable source to prove me wrong.
The NeXT boys do work at Apple now, but NeXT flopped, if I may remind you. A friend of mine had a son who worked at NeXT, too. From what I heard, it was the classical Job's style of management that helped keep the company from going too far. It'll be interesting to see how his style affects Apple now that he's back.
Judging things on technical grounds must be seperate from religious grounds. Don't like the proprietary GUI? fine. But don't start telling me that "it's not easy to use", or it's technically inferior. You have already shattered your credibility in claiming that FreeBSD is as easy to use as MacOS - it plainly isn't.
I never claimed it was as easy to use as the Mac, I simply said it was easy. The first time I installed FreeBSD it took me the time to download it from the Internet, basically. To get X running took another hour, perhaps. I would never claim it was as easy to use as the Mac, because that level of simplicity does reduce usability and render a product "technically inferior", to use your words, not mine. Again, I reference you to the Scoville essay above.
In the end, there's a level of irreducible complexity to computers that makes a GUI into a waste of time. I used to be a GUI nut, but then I realized what power and flexibility the command line offers. It's the same reason when a book gets turned into a movie the people who loved the book kavetch that the movie was horrible, it was glossy, and it lacked depth. (ie the Tom Clancy books, the John Grisham books, an so forth). Don't get me wrong, I like movies...but a good book is far more rewarding and enriching. Thus the GUIONLY mentality of Mac people annoy me, and encite me to rant.;) The GUI, like other media such as Television and Movies, promote the stiffling of thought. They garner a response mentality, where one reacts to situations; rather than a striving mentality, where one actively thinks about a problem and tries to solve it.
As to the title of your rebuttle, I think it says more than I could say about certain matters.
Mac OS X? You mean the BSD 4.4 based UNIX knockoff with the Mach Mircokernel running between the OS and hardware? The one that costs several hundered dollars as opposed to Linux or FreeBSD which are free? The one which is closed source, and has a bloated, superfluous GUI to slow down speed and operations? (For an example, just run FreeBSD with Afterstep, a non-graphically intense WM and Enlightenment...then watch your machine crawl and appreciate what the bloated MacOS GUI will do to UNIX).
FreeBSD is 3 versions and several years ahead in development of the old BSD 4.4 system. It's very easy, and you're not stuck in the Soviet world of the Macintosh Graphical User Interface. Sure, you can call up a command-line inteface in MacOS X, but if you're going to do that anyway, why pay for your OS, be stuck in a over-priced, proprietary architecture which shackles you to a particular and monopolistic OEM, and miss out on the benefit of several years of post-Berkely development by the *BSD community? Gimme a break.
Okay, I must be missing something because from these tidbits over the last few weeks about how the doc system is being changed, I have yet to understand
How the overall system works
How to learn my account score
How scores are calculated and how they change
Where this information is kept on Slashdot
Could someone either point me to the documentation (I'm assuming it exists somewhere on this site (?!?)) or explain to me How It Works?
I am deeply disturbed by this product of a "think tank". To me, it only reenforces what I have experienced in my own life, of late, the isolation of the ivory tower. The authors in this essay base their opinions on the fate of the OSS movement on equaly idealistic principles that are no more realistic than the "ideals" they claim are the OSS's Achiles heel. For example:
But OSS has a fatal flaw: it is based on a false theory of production. For the sake of an imagined voluntary cooperative, OSS rejects free market competition and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality products and targeted marketing. In a free market, identifiable manufacturers own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws.
Since when has Microsoft ever been held responsible for thier product flaws? What about Mellisa, for example? What about the Blue Screen of Death? How can they get away with charging $89 for their bug fix to Win98 (aka Windows 98 Service Release 2)? There has been no sense of responsibility shown by proprietary software manufacturers, nor has any such responsibility been forced on them.
OSS advocates also claim software distributors can make money by distributing software free of charge, while providing support services and instructional materials for a fee. This half-hearted accommodation of private ownership suffers the same flaws. It assumes that companies can survive by offering support for nonstandard software that is found in many forms.
Hardly a valid asssumption. Ever look at the prices companies charge for tech support? If your out of warranty/grace period, don't count on spending anything less than $25 for any question you might have. I imagine the coorporate accounts are even juicier.
Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows; originally OSS, later versions of Unix were made proprietary by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
It would be nice if these people at least got their facts straight. UNIX is originally an OS developed by Bell Labs, unless I'm mistaken, over thrity years ago. That predates the very inception of Mircosoft. Perhaps we have, of late, been talking of UNIX unseating the Windows monopoly, but that's only using the tools that existed before the prophanity known as DOS was even written.
Linux is a good example of how Microsoft's competitors have attempted to exploit the open source concept. It was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, who wanted to improve upon Unix and distribute an OSS operating system free of charge.
Hmm...from what I knew of the matter, Linus wrote it to have his *own* UNIX. Good god, the idea of one person thinking they could improve upon UNIX from scratch is ludicruous. Besides, how does one "improve" upon something so complex and diverse? UNIX is so vast and nebulous in its nature. Is it the kernel, the tools, the filesystem, the drivers, or the paradigm? (This was a rhetorical question, not a real one;)
Linux is building a following among computer users who have sufficient technical knowledge to take advantage of the source code. That, of course, is an important limitation of OSS: it appeals primarily to those who have an interest in tinkering with programs.
Microsoft must love it when non-affiliates engage in their Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt tactics. Anyone ever heard of Redhat? Or maybe about upcoming distributions such as the Corel one which is targeted at ease of use? (No distribution wars, please;)
Windows operating system intact while holding on to the Windows source code, even Linux supporters acknowledge they cannot compete with Windows.
I have yet to meet or speak online to a Linux/*BSD user who truly feels that way about the matter. I'm sure there are those out there who feel this way, but I don't care for the authors' painting this as a community-wide opinion.
Besides Linux, the only other OSS developments that have found much success are the products of Microsoft's competitor Netscape.
What? Pardon me, I guess the *BSD's, StarOffice, KDE, and Gnome products are no good and never used. It's bad enough when academics use assumptions, but they could at least do the research right.
In the end, the facts and assumptions of this essay are unfounded, erroneous, or just plain wrong. I'm a great fan of captialism, it goes hand-in-hand with democracy. Yet I believe it was Winston Churchil who said, "Democracy is a terrible form of government...but it is better than all the rest." Likewise, Capitalism is a terrible form for an economy...but it is better than all the rest.
The assumption that free-markets will always provide the best product is easily disproven in cases not involving software. Take Beta vs. VHS. Though this may be arguable, from what I understand, Beta was better technology, hence better for the consumer, yet VHS won the war. How about Mac vs. IBM? I'm no Mac fan, I hate Apple's proprietary nature, but consider that the GUI, which is usefull to non-techies, was in a product on sale for six years before an IBM-compatible machine equilvalent (ie, Windows) was developed. Granted, Windows is a nasty OS, but it is the fact that IBM maintained dominant market share for six years, becoming the standard for hardware to the present day, while a better way for the every-day user to operate his or her machine existed.
I don't worry much about this article, though. It's nothing more than the unfounded drivel of academics who live their lives in a vacuum. They may have their theories, which have some foundation, but in the end, the proof is in the pudding. As companies learn of the stability of Linux and the BSD's when they migrate servers from NT and Gnome and KDE make the desktop a more realistic possibility for them, then Windows will start to lose corporate marketshare to the *NIX's. When Joe User's company switches over, he'll have no choice but to get the same for home, thus nibbling away at the Windows home user market. Game manufacturers will see the marketshare start to shift, and code for Linux. Within five years, we may live in a completely different landscape than we do now, and the DOJ trial will seem humorous and irrelavent.
I'll tell you what's wrong with the way the Mac handles files...once I put a student's disk in a Mac so as to read his Word file (I use FreeBSD, so I don't have Word, wouldn't want it anyway). After we merely opened the file and printed it (no editing to the file) we put the disk back into my computer to deal with other files, and low & behold, about three or four mysterious files had appeared. From experience I knew that these were the hidden files Macs use to track files and their apps, as well as having something to do with the GUI, I believe.
It's absolute nonesense for an OS to do that. Don't put mystery files on my media without my permission. Don't presume I need you to tell me what app to use with what file. I'll tell you what I want done. Extensions can be useful, especially because they give the user pertinent information. The user can then make the important decisions. The MacOS's most annoying trait is assuming the user is a flaming idiot.
Of course, from what Mac users I know, it may be an appropriate assumption if your willing to pay over 5000 dollars for a G3, when you could by equivalent hardware from Dell for almost half the cost, and install your choice of *nixes (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, RedHat, Debian, SUSE) on it. Not only will you have saved money on hardware, but you won't be bound to a single company for further hardware upgrades (gee, I want a new chip, let's get an AMD rather than an Intel!) and won't have to pay as much for software as you did for your hardware (hm...MacOSX, a BSD4.4 derivative which is slowed by a Mach microkernel sitting between the BSD kernel and the hardware and a bloated, slow GUI for several hundered dollars, or FreeBSD...a BSD developed beyond the 4.4 release of BSD for 3 versions for free! Tough choice here...). The smart money's on an inexpensive PC box and *BSD/Linux distribution (whatever is your flavor of the month).
I read an article earlier this (last?) week about how awful Katz's articles were, how egotistical he was, blah, blah, blah. I took note of the opinion, reserving judgement until I could read some of his material myself. I read the essay, was thoroughly impressed by it, then stunned to see Katz's name at the end. A mark of how another person's opinions can color your own, no matter how hard you resist.
So where are all the "awful" essays he's written? I for one, having read only this article, am impressed with his style and skill as a writer. His comments and opinions on this matter are pensive, highly accurate, very articulate, and deeply insightful (oh, that all Slashdot posts by readers were this well done). Why is there this hobby on the net (at least on Slashdot) of flaming this man? The only person I've seen flambe'd to a roastier state is RMS. What's the story?
It seems to me that FSF has a serious case of sour-grapes and a consistent problem with understanding How the World Works. In the begining of the essay the author cedes that Mr. Stallman is an eccentric and that normal people look at him and his "mission" strangely. He then proceeds to elaborately express why he feels that Linux should be called GNU/Linux, that without GNU, Linux would have never come into existance.
Perhaps. From what I've read thus far, however, GNU software would have never found its way onto the harddrives of anyone but FSF members had it not been for Linux. The Linux kernel was written about nine years ago as I understand it. It's taken this long to reach critical mass so that businesses and some non-hackers are using it. The FSF is fifteen years old, and their own kernel was just released. From what I hear, it's not as usable as the Linux kernel. That's vaporware to exceed the fog from Redmond. At least they manage a release every five years.
Why has Linux become all the rage? Because it answers people's needs. The PC never was more than a hacker's toy until Visicalc made it a tool for business. How did Linux become something that people needed faster by eight years than Hurd? More people were developing it. Thousands of people, all over the world, with Linus at the wheel. There's a lot of work involved in coding a stable, powerful OS. By being so incredibly fanatical about the "Free software" cry, Stallman and crew alienate developers. How much has the FSF done to make Linux a viable desktop alternative? It takes more than a kernel, and I don't think the FSF has any developers on GNOME or KDE. (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
So the bottom line is, as the trite saying these days goes, "It takes a village" to write an OS that everyone can use, that is powerful and stable enough to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. GNU software is not the be all and end all of UNIX and/or good computing. So I say from my FreeBSD laptop, which has no functional dependance on the GNU tools furnished for the sake of compatibility. The FSF serves an important role in the community, but in the end, it's only one part of the whole community. They would do well to remember that
It's interesting to me that with Gates saying how Linux is "no threat" that his various media machines like Slate and mouth pieces like Mr. Muth are spewing out such an incredible volume of venomous verbage about how bad Linux is. It's been quite a biltz this week. They're saying it's over-rated, it's under-featured, it's over-hyped, and only for nerds. It has no GUI, it has a GUI that looks like Windows. It doesn't have the features of Windows, it runs "just about as fast as Windows".
Oy! FUD, FUD, FUD, everywhere I turn, nothing but FUD. I think I definitely sense fear and apprehension on the part of Billy boy. It's good to have confirmation from the man and his machine that we're really on the road to defeating his much-cherished Empire. Just like the Visigoths in the 400s on their way to Rome, here come the OSS hordes to the door of the Redmond offices. They see us coming, and they fear us. They fear the freedom and truth we represent. Time is on our side, and there is not much they can do besides this FUD campaign to stop us. Linux, FreeBSD, and other OSS OSes shall continue to prove themselves superior in the trenches. It's going to be a fun year.:)
Okay, it looks clear that as long as Linux development continues as it is, and Microsoft doesn't find some miraculous way to dig themselves out from years of bad architecture decisions, Linux will win (has won?) the server war.
Now, however, it's time to win the desktop. Between KDE, GNOME, and WINE development, I personally see Linux at taking a serious chunk of Windows desktop market share in two years, and maybe breaking the 50% mark in three years. What you do folks think, reasonable?
Of course that's nonsense. Lots of Linux users want Microsoft Office on their desktop.
Who exactly has this fellow spoken to? I know of no sane Linux user who would ever want a MS program running on his or her system. I just installed StarOffice yesterday to tide me over until PerfectSuite 9.0 is released for Linux (November?). I may not even change then. It's a great office package, and I'm very pleased with it. It does everything I need it to do, does it cleanly, and is far from rudimentary. Perhaps the author of the article linked above should spend less time broadcasting misinformation then printing corrections and more time finding a clue and getting his facts straight!
I've done more than consider Java...I've coded about 10,000 lines in it. I know my way around, and I also know how sluggish Java can be. Far better to code in C or C++ and port the code, compiling it on the native system. That Java Virtual Machine's a beast. I like Java, but lets not sacrifice performance on the alter of portablitiy.
What is this talk about the "BSD Kernel" and the "Mach microkernel"? From what I can infer from the context, is the Mach a layer of software between the hardware and the BSD kernel? If that's the case, doesn't that mean it will be slower than a native BSD, and that Apple took a quick & dirty way out? I confess complete ignorance on this, and ask for excessive corrections/suppliments/answers to my assumptions and questions.
run a 3x2 screen desktop, *without* a pager. (yeah, it's one massive desktop as opposed to many virtual desktops, but it does the same job). Pagers are a waste of screen space. I just bound a hotkey to flip pages, and that's it.
Hmm...no pager may not be inconvenient for a 3x2 desktop, but what about 4 3x3 desktops? When I'm working, I typically end up with anywhere from 50+ windows open. It's nice to remember where each of them are and be able to drag & drop any window one desktop to another (especially when they're often more than 8 desktops away from one another). So, I call it a necessity.
I tried E last night, and it was an absolute disaster. E itself worked alright, but I found it missing many functional aspects which Afterstep has. So I tried Gnome, and it crashed on me left and right. That meant no pager. What's thet point of virtual desktops without pagers? Talk about resource consumption. Eterm and Enlightenment took twice as much memory as Aterm and Afterstep, respectively. What a bunch of hype. I'll stick with Afterstep and KDE (who really needs desktop icons, anyway?) I want my desktop to work, not be pretty.
This is true, but do you know of any Office suites that can truthfully be classified as "overwhelmingly better" than MS Office? I can't. I've used 'em all, and nothing beats Word or Excel for the tasks they're designed for. And what about Powerpoint? Is there even a Linux alternative for that, much less an "overwhelmingly better" one?
Aboslutely there are better Office packages out there. I've been using WordPerfect Suite since the blue-screen days it was a lonely wordprocessor. I watched the Suite build up around it, and each time I compared it to the contemporary MSOffice, I found WP several steps ahead. So why isn't everyone using Wordperfect? They used to before Win3.1, but MS withheld vital programming information from other companies until Win3.1 was released, surprisingly in parallel with MSOffice for Windows. So WP had a six-month lag between the release of Win31/MSOffice, and managers in the meantime snapped over to MS because they feared "being behind".
Each time I take a look at Word, however, I find myself searching for features I'm used to in WordPerfect and just not finding them in Word. (Reveal codes, shadow cursor, and so forth). There used to be a tabulted comparison of Wordperfect 8.0 and the latest MSOffice. Sadly, that site is down, and I never saved it (thought I did). But, it showed how limited Word was compared to WordPerfect. Businesses aren't going to use what's better because those decisions aren't made by people with any critical thinking skills. Rather, the managers will cave to peer pressure just like they did in HS and college, being nothing more than sheep following the curve.
Very well said indeed. I read that essay last night, and was a bit disturbed by it's tone and content. Nice to get a different view of this Forum from someone else who was there. That someone else being Mr. Raymond doesn't hurt, either.;)
They don't need computers in Africa. They wouldn't know what to do with them. Probably they'd use them to crack a nut, or something.
Not computers, radios. News and information are useful to everyone. A little technology over there may just help that continent to stabilize a bit, so that people can make their lives better.
I've heard about these wind-up generators before, and my first thought was that they'd be great for notebooks. I've been eagerly awaiting someone to make this move, and I can't wait to get my hands on one. Could you imagine using that with a wireless modem? You could be hiking in the hills with your Toshiba Satellite, and telecommute to work, or do whatever. Sure, you'd have to crank it a lot, but we all need to work out. Maybe someone will make a pedal-version, so you can crank it more easily? Just sit in the woods, occassionally winding up your external notebook powersource with your feet. Pretty cool stuff.
The above replay speaking about doctors and lawyers brought to mind instantly the often-compared similarities between Open Source and my arena, the Scientific Community. There are many areas of comparison between the two, including that chemical companies also do Research & Development, expecting to make money as do programming companies with their programs. If a chemical company creates a drug, say, they will patent their compound to protect it. They will then have some 7-10 years to make money off of the product, at which time competitors can come in and make money off the exact same product. Meanwhile, academia is researching away, and publishing everything they do. Like with Open-Source hackers, one big motivation for professors, post-docs, and grad-students is recognition. Of course, the one big difference is that we in academia are also motivated by getting grants (it's more expensive to buy and maintain a NMR, IR, or Mass spectrometer than it is a computer to code on, and the stipends don't hurt either.;) Those grants, of course, come from either the same big companies I just spoke of, or the government (did I read something here on/. about programmer grants?)
Of course, there are many marked differences between producing chemicals and producing code, but I think in a big-picture kinda way, I've pointed out some of the similarities here. Perhaps the same kind of balance can be reached by Open Sourcers and Big Business? Maybe (though I fear patents in programming as yet) a six-month patent, where you must release the source-code, after which, it's open season on your code? (How would enforcement work?)
One last thing: Our internal programmers are busy enough with other work that we don't have time to constantly be messing with their source code. One important rule in science is, do the library work before you go to the lab/computer. Odds are, there's a lot of information already out there by people who did similar stuff to you. You can get insights on your issue, and save yourself a lot of effort. Code reuse is not unheard of in programming, as I understand it.;) Perhaps your programmers would save themselves some work by having a lot of source-code to reuse from outside sources. But that's not possible without Open Source. After all, if one looks at Windows systems, there's alot of redundancy. How many virus scanners, drawing programs, word processors, calculators, notepads, etc do you need? Sure, there's need for choice but I see a lot of wasted resourses too.
"cyber rasict"? That's a new one. As I recall, part of the definition of racism/prejudice is that someone is being judged for something they have no control over. Race, ethnicity, nationality &| culture(of birth), disabilities, and so forth. I find it quite rediculuous to try and lump a person's choice of OS into that category. A person can install whatever OS they want on their box, and if they need certain programs only available on one OS (a prime reason for keeping Win9x in combo w/UNIX as I have been forced to, admittedly) there's always the option to split your HD w/partitions.
Bottom line, It's not prejudicial, thought it may be petty. I don't hold a person's choice OS against them, but in this forum and context, I see nothing wrong with pointing out where (what OS & information culture) people are coming from. It's perfectly relevant, and very insightful as to the person's background and point-of-view.
Hmm...every revolution needs a leader
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Quite true, and I was completely aware of all of that. It should be pointed out, however, that without Jobs, the Apple ][ would never have come into existance. He was the driving force behind the creation of Apple computer. He desigened the excellent look (for 1970's style) of the casing, and was the visionary who thought that PCs could be sold in shopping malls (think back to what the days were like in the computerless 1970s). It was also his management style, both driven, focused, and frustrating to those under his rule, which provided the Macintosh. Arguably, without Steve Jobs, the PC revolution would have taken much longer, and possibly not been as sensational as it was.
Hmm...every revolution needs a leader
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With all this talk of who wrote what percentage of the code, be it the kernel, compiler, tools, shell, whatever, I think something important is being overlooked. Namely, that in every cultural movement, a central leader/figurehead/idealog needs to be looked to as the nucleus. People have the need to be able to point to someone and say "this is what it's all about".
Think about it. The Civil Rights movement had people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Womens' Sufferage had leaders along the lines of Susan B. Anthony. Apple computer, the leader of a more relevant movement, had Steve Jobs, who was described as, "When I didn't know what charisma was, I met Steve Jobs, and then I knew." (Of course, he's also been described as obnoxious, but anyone who's heard him speak cannot question his charisma, charm, and leadership abilities.)
Linus Torvaldis is the perfect candidate. The romantic fairy-tale of a college guy single-handedly hacking out his own stable OS because he wanted a UNIX variant catches the imagination. It also so happens that this is almost, kinda true. So much the better. He's also a great guy who has a family, a steady job, and nice, laid-back, happy attitude. He's a hacker the average man on the street can relate to.
Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is quite abraisive, rude, and thoughtless as to other people. He's "on a mission" so he says, and he obviously never lets anyone forget the mission from God he's on. He's a zealot, not an idealist. The people to be most feared are those who see no shades of gray, who confuse fanaticism with conviction. I think the "real world, gotta get stuff done" arguments which have been raised here are more than valid. Most people *use* computers, they don't design/develop them or their software. As the bard Billy Joel sang in his song Angry Young Man, "I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I found that just surviving was a noble fight. I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point-of-view, and life went on no mater who was wrong or right."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for free software, but I think that open-source may be more realistic a model, where businesses can make a buck or two. Let's not forget we live in a capitalistic society, not a communistic one. The Soviets tried communism, and it lead the people over there on a "seventy-year road to nowhere" as they say in the former Soviet Union.
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I loved this posting!! I enjoyed a good gut-wrenching guffaw for a good ten minutes when I read it. I can picture the tweaking in my mind, just like some Monty Python skit. Very well said, very insightful, and very hilarious. I wish this were moderated up a few spots.
I'm glad we've come to a meeting of the minds. Your response was satisfying to read, you had many good points of your own. If the developers in a mailing list said they used that code, that's about as first-hand as you can get. I will qibble with you on one point, however.
...administrative tools [GUIs] are designed for routine operations under normal system conditions, and this assumption is interwoven into their structure, often down to the last detail. When the system is in trouble, and these assumptions no longer hold, the tools often break down completely. ...In the end, you need to know how things really work."
It's about good and easy. Easy GUI's for the routine stuff, powerful CLI's for the hard stuff. And perhaps eventually, we'll figure away to get the expressiveness of a CLI into a GUI.
Okay, your first statement I can believe, but the second? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Think about it. Piping, command-line flags, varying argument structures, outputs from executions as arguments, ASCII output/log files parsed and processed by Awk, Sed, and Perl...you'll never be able to wrap that kind of power into a GUI. In the end, a GUI will always amount to click,drag,&drop, select, unselect, etc. Its the flexibility, brevity, and arcane nature of the command line which gives it such power. If that wasn't the case, UNIX would never have evolved in the way that it did. Remember, this is an OS which has been around for 30 years, developed by thoughtful and introspective academics, inventive industrialist researchers, and various computer gods. Allow me to quote from The O'Reilly book "Essential System Administration", page 18, in the subsection Menus and Icons Aren't Enough, "Somebody has to know how things really work.
So I say it's not about good and easy. It's about Outstanding Quality and Knowing How Things Work. In UNIX, that's been the underlying design assumption, and attempting to merge that with the Macintosh philosophy of Everything Can Be Easy for Everyone is just doomed to disaster.
Actually, I would point out that the personalities of these two leaders are in many ways the *source* of the differences between the two technologies. No, Linus did not invent UNIX, but he's got the UNIX mindframe. His instigation of Linux and his choice to make it open-source are derived from who he is, what makes him tick. IE, his personality. He could have easily have been able to get together with some friends, build Linux without newsgroup help, incorporate, and sell proprietary binaries of Linux cheap, just like Bill did with BASIC for the Altair in 1975. It is concievable such could have happened without open source, or perhaps some open-source variation on that theme. The bottom line is, it was Linus' personality which largely influenced the nature of Linux culture, and continues to today.
The same goes for Windows. Highly proprietary means the owner has *complete* control. If you learn or know anything about Bill's history, you'll see he was brought up to be intensely competitive. He seems to have an adolescent need to dominate. This is doubtlessly what made him into the huge business success he is, and why he wants every PC on every desktop to be running only his (thus Microsoft's) software, from operating system to userland programs.
The same arguments could be extended to Apple and Steve Jobs, but I won't go into that here. Anyone who knows the history of the two entities, the man and the company (and products), will see that my arguments apply here.
So when you get down to it, the OS cultures that exist today are, in many ways, cults of personality. Each and everyone of us gravitates to the OS and culture which we feel most comfortable with. It is very important, however, to recognize that these cultures originate from a single, strong personality who drove the software creation and led the development community early on, and typically still do today.
You're also toeing the line dangerously close to Godwin's law, with your silly rants about "Sovietism". Grow up, please.
;) The GUI, like other media such as Television and Movies, promote the stiffling of thought. They garner a response mentality, where one reacts to situations; rather than a striving mentality, where one actively thinks about a problem and tries to solve it.
Alright, I admit I may have had rant switched on without realizing it, and for that I apologize. Godwin's Law is a good point, but I was attempting to make a point with the Soviet remark. My point was simply that by casting decision-making and problem-solving choices into dialog boxes, dropdown lists, radio boxes, OK buttons and so forth, the OS manufacturers rob the user/administrator of the option to make creative solutions to problems. It was actually an analogy I borrowed from Thomas Scoville's article "Elements of Style: UNIX as Literature". He was discussing NT, but if you'll read the article, you'll clearly see how I thought his analogy applied directly to OS X.
By the by, your calling me to the mat on Godwin's Law was quite appropriate, but let's bag phrases like "grow up". No reason to get personal just because someone feels passionate about something.
like FreeBSD. However, your "several years ahead" of the old BSD 4.4 system argument is flawed, considering MacOS X uses FreeBSD (and NetBSD) code, plus its own enhancements drawn from almost TEN YEARS of experience with Mach (the NeXT boys DO work at Apple now, remember?)
You'll pardon me good sir, but where did you get this information? Certainly not from Apple, in their white papers, they claim OS X to be based on BSD 4.4 and Mach 2.5, but make no claim to possessing Net or Free BSD code in their system. The terms "based on" to me say that their arcitecture is based largely on the old 4.4 release. I stand by my original statement, but would be happy to retract if you can find me a reliable source to prove me wrong.
The NeXT boys do work at Apple now, but NeXT flopped, if I may remind you. A friend of mine had a son who worked at NeXT, too. From what I heard, it was the classical Job's style of management that helped keep the company from going too far. It'll be interesting to see how his style affects Apple now that he's back.
Judging things on technical grounds must be seperate from religious grounds. Don't like the proprietary GUI? fine. But
don't start telling me that "it's not easy to use", or it's technically inferior. You have already shattered your credibility
in claiming that FreeBSD is as easy to use as MacOS - it plainly isn't.
I never claimed it was as easy to use as the Mac, I simply said it was easy. The first time I installed FreeBSD it took me the time to download it from the Internet, basically. To get X running took another hour, perhaps. I would never claim it was as easy to use as the Mac, because that level of simplicity does reduce usability and render a product "technically inferior", to use your words, not mine. Again, I reference you to the Scoville essay above.
In the end, there's a level of irreducible complexity to computers that makes a GUI into a waste of time. I used to be a GUI nut, but then I realized what power and flexibility the command line offers. It's the same reason when a book gets turned into a movie the people who loved the book kavetch that the movie was horrible, it was glossy, and it lacked depth. (ie the Tom Clancy books, the John Grisham books, an so forth). Don't get me wrong, I like movies...but a good book is far more rewarding and enriching. Thus the GUIONLY mentality of Mac people annoy me, and encite me to rant.
As to the title of your rebuttle, I think it says more than I could say about certain matters.
Mac OS X? You mean the BSD 4.4 based UNIX knockoff with the Mach Mircokernel running between the OS and hardware? The one that costs several hundered dollars as opposed to Linux or FreeBSD which are free? The one which is closed source, and has a bloated, superfluous GUI to slow down speed and operations? (For an example, just run FreeBSD with Afterstep, a non-graphically intense WM and Enlightenment...then watch your machine crawl and appreciate what the bloated MacOS GUI will do to UNIX).
FreeBSD is 3 versions and several years ahead in development of the old BSD 4.4 system. It's very easy, and you're not stuck in the Soviet world of the Macintosh Graphical User Interface. Sure, you can call up a command-line inteface in MacOS X, but if you're going to do that anyway, why pay for your OS, be stuck in a over-priced, proprietary architecture which shackles you to a particular and monopolistic OEM, and miss out on the benefit of several years of post-Berkely development by the *BSD community? Gimme a break.
How the overall system works
How to learn my account score
How scores are calculated and how they change
Where this information is kept on Slashdot
Could someone either point me to the documentation (I'm assuming it exists somewhere on this site (?!?)) or explain to me How It Works?
I am deeply disturbed by this product of a "think tank". To me, it only
;)
;)
reenforces what I have experienced in my own life, of late, the isolation of
the ivory tower. The authors in this essay base their opinions on the fate of
the OSS movement on equaly idealistic principles that are no more realistic
than the "ideals" they claim are the OSS's Achiles heel. For example:
But OSS has a fatal flaw: it is based on a false theory of production. For the
sake of an imagined voluntary cooperative, OSS rejects free market competition
and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality
products and targeted marketing. In a free market, identifiable manufacturers
own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be
held liable for inexcusable flaws.
Since when has Microsoft ever been held responsible for thier product flaws?
What about Mellisa, for example? What about the Blue Screen of Death?
How can they get away with charging $89 for their bug fix to Win98 (aka
Windows 98 Service Release 2)? There has been no sense of responsibility shown
by proprietary software manufacturers, nor has any such responsibility been
forced on them.
OSS advocates also claim software distributors can make money by distributing
software free of charge, while providing support services and instructional
materials for a fee. This half-hearted accommodation of private ownership
suffers the same flaws. It assumes that companies can survive by offering
support for nonstandard software that is found in many forms.
Hardly a valid asssumption. Ever look at the prices companies charge for
tech support? If your out of warranty/grace period, don't count on spending
anything less than $25 for any question you might have. I imagine the
coorporate accounts are even juicier.
Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against
Microsoft Windows; originally OSS, later versions of Unix were made proprietary
by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
It would be nice if these people at least got their facts straight. UNIX is
originally an OS developed by Bell Labs, unless I'm mistaken, over thrity years
ago. That predates the very inception of Mircosoft. Perhaps we have, of late,
been talking of UNIX unseating the Windows monopoly, but that's only using the
tools that existed before the prophanity known as DOS was even written.
Linux is a good example of how Microsoft's competitors have attempted to
exploit the open source concept. It was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a
student at the University of Helsinki, who wanted to improve upon Unix and
distribute an OSS operating system free of charge.
Hmm...from what I knew of the matter, Linus wrote it to have his *own*
UNIX. Good god, the idea of one person thinking they could improve upon UNIX
from scratch is ludicruous. Besides, how does one "improve" upon something so
complex and diverse? UNIX is so vast and nebulous in its nature. Is it the
kernel, the tools, the filesystem, the drivers, or the paradigm? (This was a
rhetorical question, not a real one
Linux is building a following among computer users who have sufficient
technical knowledge to take advantage of the source code. That, of course, is an
important limitation of OSS: it appeals primarily to those who have an interest
in tinkering with programs.
Microsoft must love it when non-affiliates engage in their Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt tactics. Anyone ever heard of Redhat? Or maybe about
upcoming distributions such as the Corel one which is targeted at ease of use?
(No distribution wars, please
Windows operating system intact while holding on to the Windows source
code, even Linux supporters acknowledge they cannot compete with Windows.
I have yet to meet or speak online to a Linux/*BSD user who truly feels that
way about the matter. I'm sure there are those out there who feel this way,
but I don't care for the authors' painting this as a community-wide opinion.
Besides Linux, the only other OSS developments that have found much
success are the products of Microsoft's competitor Netscape.
What? Pardon me, I guess the *BSD's, StarOffice, KDE, and Gnome products
are no good and never used. It's bad enough when academics use assumptions,
but they could at least do the research right.
In the end, the facts and assumptions of this essay are unfounded, erroneous,
or just plain wrong. I'm a great fan of captialism, it goes hand-in-hand with
democracy. Yet I believe it was Winston Churchil who said, "Democracy is a
terrible form of government...but it is better than all the rest."
Likewise, Capitalism is a terrible form for an economy...but it is better than
all the rest.
The assumption that free-markets will always provide the best product is
easily disproven in cases not involving software. Take Beta vs. VHS. Though
this may be arguable, from what I understand, Beta was better technology, hence
better for the consumer, yet VHS won the war. How about Mac vs. IBM? I'm no
Mac fan, I hate Apple's proprietary nature, but consider that the GUI, which is
usefull to non-techies, was in a product on sale for six years before an
IBM-compatible machine equilvalent (ie, Windows) was developed. Granted,
Windows is a nasty OS, but it is the fact that IBM maintained dominant market
share for six years, becoming the standard for hardware to the present day,
while a better way for the every-day user to operate his or her machine existed.
I don't worry much about this article, though. It's nothing more than the
unfounded drivel of academics who live their lives in a vacuum. They may have
their theories, which have some foundation, but in the end, the proof is in the
pudding. As companies learn of the stability of Linux and the BSD's when they
migrate servers from NT and Gnome and KDE make the desktop a more realistic possibility
for them, then Windows will start to lose corporate marketshare to the *NIX's.
When Joe User's company switches over, he'll have no choice but to get the
same for home, thus nibbling away at the Windows home user market. Game
manufacturers will see the marketshare start to shift, and code for Linux.
Within five years, we may live in a completely different landscape than we do
now, and the DOJ trial will seem humorous and irrelavent.
I'll tell you what's wrong with the way the Mac handles files...once I put a student's disk in a Mac so as to read his Word file (I use FreeBSD, so I don't have Word, wouldn't want it anyway). After we merely opened the file and printed it (no editing to the file) we put the disk back into my computer to deal with other files, and low & behold, about three or four mysterious files had appeared. From experience I knew that these were the hidden files Macs use to track files and their apps, as well as having something to do with the GUI, I believe.
It's absolute nonesense for an OS to do that. Don't put mystery files on my media without my permission. Don't presume I need you to tell me what app to use with what file. I'll tell you what I want done. Extensions can be useful, especially because they give the user pertinent information. The user can then make the important decisions. The MacOS's most annoying trait is assuming the user is a flaming idiot.
Of course, from what Mac users I know, it may be an appropriate assumption if your willing to pay over 5000 dollars for a G3, when you could by equivalent hardware from Dell for almost half the cost, and install your choice of *nixes (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, RedHat, Debian, SUSE) on it. Not only will you have saved money on hardware, but you won't be bound to a single company for further hardware upgrades (gee, I want a new chip, let's get an AMD rather than an Intel!) and won't have to pay as much for software as you did for your hardware (hm...MacOSX, a BSD4.4 derivative which is slowed by a Mach microkernel sitting between the BSD kernel and the hardware and a bloated, slow GUI for several hundered dollars, or FreeBSD...a BSD developed beyond the 4.4 release of BSD for 3 versions for free! Tough choice here...). The smart money's on an inexpensive PC box and *BSD/Linux distribution (whatever is your flavor of the month).
I read an article earlier this (last?) week about how awful Katz's articles were, how egotistical he was, blah, blah, blah. I took note of the opinion, reserving judgement until I could read some of his material myself. I read the essay, was thoroughly impressed by it, then stunned to see Katz's name at the end. A mark of how another person's opinions can color your own, no matter how hard you resist.
So where are all the "awful" essays he's written? I for one, having read only this article, am impressed with his style and skill as a writer. His comments and opinions on this matter are pensive, highly accurate, very articulate, and deeply insightful (oh, that all Slashdot posts by readers were this well done). Why is there this hobby on the net (at least on Slashdot) of flaming this man? The only person I've seen flambe'd to a roastier state is RMS. What's the story?
It seems to me that FSF has a serious case of sour-grapes and a consistent problem with understanding How the World Works. In the begining of the essay the author cedes that Mr. Stallman is an eccentric and that normal people look at him and his "mission" strangely. He then proceeds to elaborately express why he feels that Linux should be called GNU/Linux, that without GNU, Linux would have never come into existance.
Perhaps. From what I've read thus far, however, GNU software would have never found its way onto the harddrives of anyone but FSF members had it not been for Linux. The Linux kernel was written about nine years ago as I understand it. It's taken this long to reach critical mass so that businesses and some non-hackers are using it. The FSF is fifteen years old, and their own kernel was just released. From what I hear, it's not as usable as the Linux kernel. That's vaporware to exceed the fog from Redmond. At least they manage a release every five years.
Why has Linux become all the rage? Because it answers people's needs. The PC never was more than a hacker's toy until Visicalc made it a tool for business. How did Linux become something that people needed faster by eight years than Hurd? More people were developing it. Thousands of people, all over the world, with Linus at the wheel. There's a lot of work involved in coding a stable, powerful OS. By being so incredibly fanatical about the "Free software" cry, Stallman and crew alienate developers. How much has the FSF done to make Linux a viable desktop alternative? It takes more than a kernel, and I don't think the FSF has any developers on GNOME or KDE. (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
So the bottom line is, as the trite saying these days goes, "It takes a village" to write an OS that everyone can use, that is powerful and stable enough to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. GNU software is not the be all and end all of UNIX and/or good computing. So I say from my FreeBSD laptop, which has no functional dependance on the GNU tools furnished for the sake of compatibility. The FSF serves an important role in the community, but in the end, it's only one part of the whole community. They would do well to remember that
It's interesting to me that with Gates saying how Linux is "no threat" that his various media machines like Slate and mouth pieces like Mr. Muth are spewing out such an incredible volume of venomous verbage about how bad Linux is. It's been quite a biltz this week. They're saying it's over-rated, it's under-featured, it's over-hyped, and only for nerds. It has no GUI, it has a GUI that looks like Windows. It doesn't have the features of Windows, it runs "just about as fast as Windows".
:)
Oy! FUD, FUD, FUD, everywhere I turn, nothing but FUD. I think I definitely sense fear and apprehension on the part of Billy boy. It's good to have confirmation from the man and his machine that we're really on the road to defeating his much-cherished Empire. Just like the Visigoths in the 400s on their way to Rome, here come the OSS hordes to the door of the Redmond offices. They see us coming, and they fear us. They fear the freedom and truth we represent. Time is on our side, and there is not much they can do besides this FUD campaign to stop us. Linux, FreeBSD, and other OSS OSes shall continue to prove themselves superior in the trenches. It's going to be a fun year.
Okay, it looks clear that as long as Linux development continues as it is, and Microsoft doesn't find some miraculous way to dig themselves out from years of bad architecture decisions, Linux will win (has won?) the server war.
Now, however, it's time to win the desktop. Between KDE, GNOME, and WINE development, I personally see Linux at taking a serious chunk of Windows desktop market share in two years, and maybe breaking the 50% mark in three years. What you do folks think, reasonable?
Of course that's nonsense. Lots of Linux users want Microsoft Office on their desktop.
Who exactly has this fellow spoken to? I know of no sane Linux user who would ever want a MS program running on his or her system. I just installed StarOffice yesterday to tide me over until PerfectSuite 9.0 is released for Linux (November?). I may not even change then. It's a great office package, and I'm very pleased with it. It does everything I need it to do, does it cleanly, and is far from rudimentary. Perhaps the author of the article linked above should spend less time broadcasting misinformation then printing corrections and more time finding a clue and getting his facts straight!
I've done more than consider Java...I've coded about 10,000 lines in it. I know my way around, and I also know how sluggish Java can be. Far better to code in C or C++ and port the code, compiling it on the native system. That Java Virtual Machine's a beast. I like Java, but lets not sacrifice performance on the alter of portablitiy.
What is this talk about the "BSD Kernel" and the "Mach microkernel"? From what I can infer from the context, is the Mach a layer of software between the hardware and the BSD kernel? If that's the case, doesn't that mean it will be slower than a native BSD, and that Apple took a quick & dirty way out? I confess complete ignorance on this, and ask for excessive corrections/suppliments/answers to my assumptions and questions.
run a 3x2 screen desktop, *without* a pager. (yeah, it's one massive desktop as opposed to many virtual
desktops, but it does the same job). Pagers are a waste of screen space. I just bound a hotkey to flip pages, and
that's it.
Hmm...no pager may not be inconvenient for a 3x2 desktop, but what about 4 3x3 desktops? When I'm working, I typically end up with anywhere from 50+ windows open. It's nice to remember where each of them are and be able to drag & drop any window one desktop to another (especially when they're often more than 8 desktops away from one another). So, I call it a necessity.
I tried E last night, and it was an absolute disaster. E itself worked alright, but I found it missing many functional aspects which Afterstep has. So I tried Gnome, and it crashed on me left and right. That meant no pager. What's thet point of virtual desktops without pagers? Talk about resource consumption. Eterm and Enlightenment took twice as much memory as Aterm and Afterstep, respectively. What a bunch of hype. I'll stick with Afterstep and KDE (who really needs desktop icons, anyway?) I want my desktop to work, not be pretty.
This is true, but do you know of any Office suites that can truthfully be classified as "overwhelmingly better" than
MS Office? I can't. I've used 'em all, and nothing beats Word or Excel for the tasks they're designed for. And
what about Powerpoint? Is there even a Linux alternative for that, much less an "overwhelmingly better" one?
Aboslutely there are better Office packages out there. I've been using WordPerfect Suite since the blue-screen days it was a lonely wordprocessor. I watched the Suite build up around it, and each time I compared it to the contemporary MSOffice, I found WP several steps ahead. So why isn't everyone using Wordperfect? They used to before Win3.1, but MS withheld vital programming information from other companies until Win3.1 was released, surprisingly in parallel with MSOffice for Windows. So WP had a six-month lag between the release of Win31/MSOffice, and managers in the meantime snapped over to MS because they feared "being behind".
Each time I take a look at Word, however, I find myself searching for features I'm used to in WordPerfect and just not finding them in Word. (Reveal codes, shadow cursor, and so forth). There used to be a tabulted comparison of Wordperfect 8.0 and the latest MSOffice. Sadly, that site is down, and I never saved it (thought I did). But, it showed how limited Word was compared to WordPerfect. Businesses aren't going to use what's better because those decisions aren't made by people with any critical thinking skills. Rather, the managers will cave to peer pressure just like they did in HS and college, being nothing more than sheep following the curve.
Very well said indeed. I read that essay last night, and was a bit disturbed by it's tone and content. Nice to get a different view of this Forum from someone else who was there. That someone else being Mr. Raymond doesn't hurt, either. ;)
Not computers, radios. News and information are useful to everyone. A little technology over there may just help that continent to stabilize a bit, so that people can make their lives better.
I've heard about these wind-up generators before, and my first thought was that they'd be great for notebooks. I've been eagerly awaiting someone to make this move, and I can't wait to get my hands on one. Could you imagine using that with a wireless modem? You could be hiking in the hills with your Toshiba Satellite, and telecommute to work, or do whatever. Sure, you'd have to crank it a lot, but we all need to work out. Maybe someone will make a pedal-version, so you can crank it more easily? Just sit in the woods, occassionally winding up your external notebook powersource with your feet. Pretty cool stuff.
The above replay speaking about doctors and lawyers brought to mind instantly the often-compared similarities between Open Source and my arena, the Scientific Community. There are many areas of comparison between the two, including that chemical companies also do Research & Development, expecting to make money as do programming companies with their programs. If a chemical company creates a drug, say, they will patent their compound to protect it. They will then have some 7-10 years to make money off of the product, at which time competitors can come in and make money off the exact same product. Meanwhile, academia is researching away, and publishing everything they do. Like with Open-Source hackers, one big motivation for professors, post-docs, and grad-students is recognition. Of course, the one big difference is that we in academia are also motivated by getting grants (it's more expensive to buy and maintain a NMR, IR, or Mass spectrometer than it is a computer to code on, and the stipends don't hurt either. ;) Those grants, of course, come from either the same big companies I just spoke of, or the government (did I read something here on /. about programmer grants?)
;) Perhaps your programmers would save themselves some work by having a lot of source-code to reuse from outside sources. But that's not possible without Open Source. After all, if one looks at Windows systems, there's alot of redundancy. How many virus scanners, drawing programs, word processors, calculators, notepads, etc do you need? Sure, there's need for choice but I see a lot of wasted resourses too.
Of course, there are many marked differences between producing chemicals and producing code, but I think in a big-picture kinda way, I've pointed out some of the similarities here. Perhaps the same kind of balance can be reached by Open Sourcers and Big Business? Maybe (though I fear patents in programming as yet) a six-month patent, where you must release the source-code, after which, it's open season on your code? (How would enforcement work?)
One last thing:
Our internal programmers are busy enough with other work that we don't have time to constantly be messing with their source code. One important rule in science is, do the library work before you go to the lab/computer. Odds are, there's a lot of information already out there by people who did similar stuff to you. You can get insights on your issue, and save yourself a lot of effort. Code reuse is not unheard of in programming, as I understand it.
"cyber rasict"? That's a new one. As I recall, part of the definition of racism/prejudice is that someone is being judged for something they have no control over. Race, ethnicity, nationality &| culture(of birth), disabilities, and so forth. I find it quite rediculuous to try and lump a person's choice of OS into that category. A person can install whatever OS they want on their box, and if they need certain programs only available on one OS (a prime reason for keeping Win9x in combo w/UNIX as I have been forced to, admittedly) there's always the option to split your HD w/partitions.
Bottom line, It's not prejudicial, thought it may be petty. I don't hold a person's choice OS against them,
but in this forum and context, I see nothing wrong with pointing out where (what OS & information culture) people are coming from. It's perfectly relevant, and very insightful as to the person's background and point-of-view.
Quite true, and I was completely aware of all of that. It should be pointed out, however, that without Jobs, the Apple ][ would never have come into existance. He was the driving force behind the creation of Apple computer. He desigened the excellent look (for 1970's style) of the casing, and was the visionary who thought that PCs could be sold in shopping malls (think back to what the days were like in the computerless 1970s). It was also his management style, both driven, focused, and frustrating to those under his rule, which provided the Macintosh. Arguably, without Steve Jobs, the PC revolution would have taken much longer, and possibly not been as sensational as it was.
With all this talk of who wrote what percentage of the code, be it the kernel, compiler, tools, shell, whatever, I think something important is being overlooked. Namely, that in every cultural movement, a central leader/figurehead/idealog needs to be looked to as the nucleus. People have the need to be able to point to someone and say "this is what it's all about".
Think about it. The Civil Rights movement had people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Womens' Sufferage had leaders along the lines of Susan B. Anthony. Apple computer, the leader of a more relevant movement, had Steve Jobs, who was described as, "When I didn't know what charisma was, I met Steve Jobs, and then I knew." (Of course, he's also been described as obnoxious, but anyone who's heard him speak cannot question his charisma, charm, and leadership abilities.)
Linus Torvaldis is the perfect candidate. The romantic fairy-tale of a college guy single-handedly hacking out his own stable OS because he wanted a UNIX variant catches the imagination. It also so happens that this is almost, kinda true. So much the better. He's also a great guy who has a family, a steady job, and nice, laid-back, happy attitude. He's a hacker the average man on the street can relate to.
Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is quite abraisive, rude, and thoughtless as to other people. He's "on a mission" so he says, and he obviously never lets anyone forget the mission from God he's on. He's a zealot, not an idealist. The people to be most feared are those who see no shades of gray, who confuse fanaticism with conviction. I think the "real world, gotta get stuff done" arguments which have been raised here are more than valid. Most people *use* computers, they don't design/develop them or their software. As the bard Billy Joel sang in his song Angry Young Man, "I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I found that just surviving was a noble fight. I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point-of-view, and life went on no mater who was wrong or right."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for free software, but I think that open-source may be more realistic a model, where businesses can make a buck or two. Let's not forget we live in a capitalistic society, not a communistic one. The Soviets tried communism, and it lead the people over there on a "seventy-year road to nowhere" as they say in the former Soviet Union.