Con had some great ideas, no doubt, but he has a huge lack of objectivity which probably biased him and led to his current discontent.
For one, he describes a horrible performing desktop environment. However, we have been avid Linux users since the late 1990s and one of our justifications was that Windows felt slower on the same hardware. It was originally due to that desktop experience that our offices have been primarily Linux based since around 1999. Most people in our office dual-booted to windows/2000 (staring with beta) or later windows/XP and we always found the windows environment to feel slower than Linux, especially when we were running lots of applications at the same time. Everyone was given the choice to use windows or Linux and by the end of 2000 everyone found they liked Linux better on regular machines for regular desktop use. Starting about 3 years ago only a few of our machines even dual boot anymore, we just wipe windows off completely so we don't waste the disk space.
In the article there was a description of music skipping, windows jumping, programs running slowly, etc. That may have been true 10 years ago, but nothing like that exists anymore. Even on my 500MHz Gateway Laptop back in 1998 this was not an issue. It ran fine, played music, ran word processing, was a pleasure to use. It did skip when playing movies, but the rest was an upgrade from windows.
As far as the reimplementation, I think we need to be objective. Con has had awesome ideas and great insights and could prototype well, but his coding skills were still a bit behind some of the other core developers. He pioneered a great scheduling idea, which is the hard part, having it re-implemented and cleaned up is a natural part of software progression and one of the benefits of how open source works. Unfortunately he let that get to him instead of being thankful for the adaptation of his ideas, which was his ultimate goal in the first place.
These days Linux is a dream to use. My Linux laptop (Dell Inspiron 9300) runs fantastic. Its fast, I can have compilers, www servers, databases, number crunching applications all running and still have a very snappy desktop. If I compare it to Vista then we are talking about Linux being by far the best performer. Even if I boot into XP I feel I'm tapping my fingers waiting all the time, which just doesn't happen in Linux. Anyone who dual-boots will see that Linux feels far more snappy than windows on the same hardware, and I don't even have the new scheduler yet.
Clearly the Linux desktop is doing very well. I think the entire context of the complaints was a way for Con to let of some steam. I wish him well in what ever he decides to do and I'm sorry to see his contributions lead to bitterness.
Your statement implies that well-off parents are sort of a requirement, which is misleading.
Its easier to follow a good example, but the same path is open to anyone. You don't have to have well-off parents in order to pave the way to success. That is very much a misconception and a common excuse that gets used even though there are thousands of examples that contradict it.
I have no doubt that the income gap statistics are true, but the point that keeps getting lost is that each person can choose their own future. Nothing prevents a person from making more money if that's what they want to do. We keep trying to make low income the same as victim, when that's rarely the case. Everyone has control over that and there's plenty of room at the top for anyone who wants to go there.
A good example is a friend of mine from Tennessee. She was a single mother as a teenager with no job and nothing but a basic high school education. Sounds like a charity case example, how could she overcome that?
Well, she decided to make a future for herself, so she worked part time and put herself through college, no free handouts, and now makes a very healthy salary as an engineer. She went from the minimum wage category to the top 10% just because she wanted to. She had all the classic excuses, but instead of taking the easy road she chose to rise above it.
It was probably pure hell, working part time jobs, taking care of a kid and getting good grades, but, no one said it was easy. Easy is not part of the deal, the deal is just that you have the ability to change your destiny if you want to. There's no class system, no one preventing you from pursuing any dream you like.
Bottom line, in this country there's no limit except those we impose on ourselves.
All I've seen is that any time someone applies themselves they rise up. Some examples you say? Sure:
* one of my best friends spent summers in college selling cars... now he owns a chain of profitable dealerships. * one of the people I first hired for a very low salary in my company was able to take on any task and do it perfectly. He's now a manager at Microsoft with a net worth in the millions. * a family member who started with your basic Chemical Eng. degree, then got his MBA and a Doctorate from MIT. He worked his way into upper management at Exxon then went into business for himself. * at 26 years old I was on my second major technology related job and decided to start my own business developing software electric utility companies.
That was 18 years ago and we are still going strong.
I could give you many more examples, the point is simple. If you believe in yourself, work hard, accept nothing but the best from yourself and don't expect help from anyone then you can end up anywhere you want. That's all the America Dream promises, the opportunity, but the rest is up to you.
However, if you think for a second that you are entitled to a handout of any kind, you will fail. If you think someone owes you something, you will fail. If you aren't willing to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks when needed, you will fail. If you think that things should be fair, you will fail. If you think that you can do it without taking risk, you will fail. In other words, if you can look in the mirror and say "everything that happens to me is completely up to me" and you act on it then you have a great shot of making anything you want happen. Otherwise you aren't gonna live the dream without a lot of luck.
As for these guys, look at Circuit City's choices:
1. go under - everyone gets fired 2. do drastic cost cutting moves - some people get fired
Does it suck? yeah! But that's life, these guys just need to find another dead end job. There are lots of them around. If they want something better then that is up to them.
The reason that people find the whole Gore statement so amusing is that well before Gore's 1990 bill we were already seeing the rapid growth of the internet.
Sun already required their VARs to have internet accounts. I already had trouble registering my company's domain name because so many of the cool ones were used up. We managed to get one cool domain name: inc.com. It was later sold to Inc. Magazine for a free magazine subscription (yes, I'm sorry to say I'm not joking!). This was happening long _before_ Gore's bill.
Anyone who was into technology at that time could see it coming. It was clear that as soon as regular PCs became network enabled the whole thing would explode. This took a lot longer than I expected because certain PC OS companies were so clueless about networking, but it did happen eventually.
The point is that this whole process was already set in motion, there was nothing Gore could do about it one way or the other. People who think Gore had anything to do with this just weren't around it or didn't understand what was already going on. The fact that Gore thought he had an impact simply shows he didn't know what was going on either.
We need to remember that the default PC or Mac system at that time had no TCP/IP stack, so the vast majority of users had no true networking, It wasn't until the OS evolved enough so that average users could install third party TCP/IP stacks that dailing into the internet was even an option. Once the systems were delivered with TCP/IP it became easy for everyone and the thing really started to take off and Metcalf's law kicked in.
RMS doesn't get it, users want the freedom to choose the best value. The GPL is great and it adds value, but isn't the only factor. There can also be good value in having a solid product that is paid for and uses a commercial license. More cost or license restrictions can lower the value. In the end the user decides at what level those factors eliminate it from consideration.
Assuming that one single criteria (GPL/Open Source) should be the only or even primary deciding factor is _way_ too restrictive, it limits freedom to choose. Linus made it really clear that right now BitKeeper offers the best overall value for what he wants to do. He also made it really clear he is not forcing BK on anyone else. If BK's license gets more restrictive in the future and it is no longer the best overall value he can switch to something else (he's really smart like that). All the rest of this panic is just FUD.
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Con had some great ideas, no doubt, but he has a huge lack of objectivity which probably biased him and led to his current discontent.
For one, he describes a horrible performing desktop environment. However, we have been avid Linux users since the late 1990s and one of our justifications was that Windows felt slower on the same hardware. It was originally due to that desktop experience that our offices have been primarily Linux based since around 1999. Most people in our office dual-booted to windows/2000 (staring with beta) or later windows/XP and we always found the windows environment to feel slower than Linux, especially when we were running lots of applications at the same time. Everyone was given the choice to use windows or Linux and by the end of 2000 everyone found they liked Linux better on regular machines for regular desktop use. Starting about 3 years ago only a few of our machines even dual boot anymore, we just wipe windows off completely so we don't waste the disk space.
In the article there was a description of music skipping, windows jumping, programs running slowly, etc. That may have been true 10 years ago, but nothing like that exists anymore. Even on my 500MHz Gateway Laptop back in 1998 this was not an issue. It ran fine, played music, ran word processing, was a pleasure to use. It did skip when playing movies, but the rest was an upgrade from windows.
As far as the reimplementation, I think we need to be objective. Con has had awesome ideas and great insights and could prototype well, but his coding skills were still a bit behind some of the other core developers. He pioneered a great scheduling idea, which is the hard part, having it re-implemented and cleaned up is a natural part of software progression and one of the benefits of how open source works. Unfortunately he let that get to him instead of being thankful for the adaptation of his ideas, which was his ultimate goal in the first place.
These days Linux is a dream to use. My Linux laptop (Dell Inspiron 9300) runs fantastic. Its fast, I can have compilers, www servers, databases, number crunching applications all running and still have a very snappy desktop. If I compare it to Vista then we are talking about Linux being by far the best performer. Even if I boot into XP I feel I'm tapping my fingers waiting all the time, which just doesn't happen in Linux. Anyone who dual-boots will see that Linux feels far more snappy than windows on the same hardware, and I don't even have the new scheduler yet.
Clearly the Linux desktop is doing very well. I think the entire context of the complaints was a way for Con to let of some steam. I wish him well in what ever he decides to do and I'm sorry to see his contributions lead to bitterness.
Your statement implies that well-off parents are sort of a requirement, which is misleading.
Its easier to follow a good example, but the same path is open to anyone. You don't have to have well-off parents in order to pave the way to success. That is very much a misconception and a common excuse that gets used even though there are thousands of examples that contradict it.
I have no doubt that the income gap statistics are true, but the point that keeps getting lost is that each person can choose their own future. Nothing prevents a person from making more money if that's what they want to do. We keep trying to make low income the same as victim, when that's rarely the case. Everyone has control over that and there's plenty of room at the top for anyone who wants to go there.
A good example is a friend of mine from Tennessee. She was a single mother as a teenager with no job and nothing but a basic high school education. Sounds like a charity case example, how could she overcome that?
Well, she decided to make a future for herself, so she worked part time and put herself through college, no free handouts, and now makes a very healthy salary as an engineer. She went from the minimum wage category to the top 10% just because she wanted to. She had all the classic excuses, but instead of taking the easy road she chose to rise above it.
It was probably pure hell, working part time jobs, taking care of a kid and getting good grades, but, no one said it was easy. Easy is not part of the deal, the deal is just that you have the ability to change your destiny if you want to. There's no class system, no one preventing you from pursuing any dream you like.
Bottom line, in this country there's no limit except those we impose on ourselves.
Wow, what country have you been living in?
... now he owns a chain of profitable dealerships.
All I've seen is that any time someone applies themselves they rise up. Some examples you say? Sure:
* one of my best friends spent summers in college selling cars
* one of the people I first hired for a very low salary in my company was able to take on any task and do it perfectly. He's now a manager at Microsoft with a net worth in the millions.
* a family member who started with your basic Chemical Eng. degree, then got his MBA and a Doctorate from MIT. He worked his way into upper management at Exxon then went into business for himself.
* at 26 years old I was on my second major technology related job and decided to start my own business developing software electric utility companies.
That was 18 years ago and we are still going strong.
I could give you many more examples, the point is simple. If you believe in yourself, work hard, accept nothing but the best from yourself and don't expect help from anyone then you can end up anywhere you want. That's all the America Dream promises, the opportunity, but the rest is up to you.
However, if you think for a second that you are entitled to a handout of any kind, you will fail. If you think someone owes you something, you will fail. If you aren't willing to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks when needed, you will fail. If you think that things should be fair, you will fail. If you think that you can do it without taking risk, you will fail. In other words, if you can look in the mirror and say "everything that happens to me is completely up to me" and you act on it then you have a great shot of making anything you want happen. Otherwise you aren't gonna live the dream without a lot of luck.
As for these guys, look at Circuit City's choices:
1. go under - everyone gets fired
2. do drastic cost cutting moves - some people get fired
Does it suck? yeah! But that's life, these guys just need to find another dead end job. There are lots of them around. If they want something better then that is up to them.
The reason that people find the whole Gore statement so amusing is that well before Gore's 1990 bill we were already seeing the rapid growth of the internet.
Sun already required their VARs to have internet accounts. I already had trouble registering my company's domain name because so many of the cool ones were used up. We managed to get one cool domain name: inc.com. It was later sold to Inc. Magazine for a free magazine subscription (yes, I'm sorry to say I'm not joking!). This was happening long _before_ Gore's bill.
Anyone who was into technology at that time could see it coming. It was clear that as soon as regular PCs became network enabled the whole thing would explode. This took a lot longer than I expected because certain PC OS companies were so clueless about networking, but it did happen eventually.
The point is that this whole process was already set in motion, there was nothing Gore could do about it one way or the other. People who think Gore had anything to do with this just weren't around it or didn't understand what was already going on. The fact that Gore thought he had an impact simply shows he didn't know what was going on either.
We need to remember that the default PC or Mac system at that time had no TCP/IP stack, so the vast majority of users had no true networking, It wasn't until the OS evolved enough so that average users could install third party TCP/IP stacks that dailing into the internet was even an option. Once the systems were delivered with TCP/IP it became easy for everyone and the thing really started to take off and Metcalf's law kicked in.
RMS doesn't get it, users want the freedom to choose the best value. The GPL is great and it adds value, but isn't the only factor. There can also be good value in having a solid product that is paid for and uses a commercial license. More cost or license restrictions can lower the value. In the end the user decides at what level those factors eliminate it from consideration.
Assuming that one single criteria (GPL/Open Source) should be the only or even primary deciding factor is _way_ too restrictive, it limits freedom to choose. Linus made it really clear that right now BitKeeper offers the best overall value for what he wants to do. He also made it really clear he is not forcing BK on anyone else. If BK's license gets more restrictive in the future and it is no longer the best overall value he can switch to something else (he's really smart like that). All the rest of this panic is just FUD.
-- Marck