the public at large interprets his comments as the position of the rest of the Linux (and dare I say, open source) community.
I'd rather have Linus Torvalds speaking on behalf of the open source community than, say, Richard Stallman or Bruce Perens. The latter two are more than happy to explicitly declare that they're speaking on behalf of all of us, and more often than not they're making embarassing declarations that not all of us want to be associated with. Linus is an engineer; he cuts to the chase and says exactly what he needs to say, no more and no less. If people want to interpret his words as "official open source community position" then that's their perogative. It's not the official word, but it's the word most of us will agree with, far more than that of the self-appointed "community leaders."
While I don't personally believe that Google is getting dethroned anytime soon, keep in mind that it has happened before. Back in the 1970's, all the Really Smart People (tm) in Silicon Valley worked for the mighty giant known as Fairchild Semiconductor. A few of them jumped ship to go work on their own, on this crazy idea they had to put an entire central processing unit on a single chip.
For me, at least, there aren't any second chances. The great thing about the Linux market is there's plenty of choice. Why choose Novell now?
Better not give IBM a second chance either. They blew it with their strongarm tactics for over thirty years. Why allow them to be a friend of the free world now?
He won't say exactly what patents they are, but they probably include things like "Method and apparatus for sitting on your couch eating cheesy poofs while watching television" and "Method and apparatus for displaying television programs which contain blocks of programming separated by commercials."
So, they figured out a way to save their "Roaming Profiles" technology (which is horrendously unreliable) to a flash disk instead of just storing on the network. Big deal. The only "innovation" is the addition of DRM, which itself is predictable, and also a feature nobody wants.
Microsoft: providing you with Innovative Innovations (tm) to Microsoft SneakerNet (tm) at a time when everyone else is moving towards the "always-on" web profile.
One of the open source Exchange killers is Citadel, which there definitely are.deb's and repositories for. The reason you won't find Zimbra, Scalix, etc. there is because those products are not "true" open source; they're basically just stripped down versions of commercial products. The only reason Zimbra and Scalix are quasi open source in the first place is because they needed access to open source components like Postfix, MySQL, etc. Citadel is true community-developed open source.
Most of the open source groupware systems seem to have a non-free "pro" or "enterprise" version. If you're looking for something that's completely open source, you might want to try out Citadel [http://www.citadel.org]. It is community-developed and doesn't have the multi-tiered approach. Fully turnkey, nothing to integrate manually, and it has a nice ajax-based front end too. An Outlook connector is currently in beta, too.
Dell will also establish a services and marketing program to migrate existing Linux users who are not Dell Linux customers to Suse Linux, Microsoft said.
Too bad for them.
I am a senior admin at a data center which is home to thousands of Dell servers, many of which run Linux. Our standard Linux build uses CentOS and therefore we order the machines with "no operating system installed." If Dell approaches us and tells us that they're going to forcibly move us over to Microsoft Linux (aka Novell/Ximian/SuSE) we will promptly tell them to go f**k themselves. And if they stop offering machines with blank hard disks, we will promptly switch vendors. I hear Sun's x86 offerings are competitively priced these days and I've just been itching for an excuse to go to them anyway.
It's even more reminiscent of the Compaq/DEC merger. Compaq acquired DEC and then went to all of the Tru64 Unix customers and declared to them: "Hi there. We're going to migrate you to Windows NT." The vast majority of them replied, "Fuck you, we're going to Sun." By the time Compaq realized that enterprise admins will give up Unix when you pry it from their cold dead fingers, it was already way too late, and Sun (and later, Linux) ran away with Compaq/DEC's unix market share.
A friend who used to work for Prodigy once told me that they had a peek at the MSN infrastructure and they discovered that in the mega-portal space, Windows requires twice as much hardware per unit of load as Unix systems. Yahoo is of course built around Unix. Are they really going to try to move that whole infrastructure over? Look at how long it took them to convert Hotmail.
I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Microsoft originated the XmlHttpRequest() object, which is one of the technologies upon which AJAX is built. Microsoft did this in order to make Web Outlook suck on non-IE browsers. Most (but not all) of the credit for the revolution of web apps with desktop-like richness goes to Google and other forward-thinking developers. Microsoft would never have implemented XmlHttpRequest() if they had known that they were helping to enable the AJAX revolution -- a technology shift that simultaneously made the desktop less important and broke their monopoly on web browsers.
Well, because I believe that Siverlight will become an important component in future applications. The majority of people will probably be happy to spice up their web applications with a little silverlight as it will run on Windows and MacOS.
I'd like to remind everyone that just a few years ago, Miguel was saying the same thing about XAML. "XAML/Avalon applications will be written, and people will consume them. The worst bit: people will expect their desktop to be able to access these "rich" sites," he said. If the Linux community didn't build a XAML runtime, we'd be left out in the cold, he said.
Now it's three years later. Where are all of the XAML applications? Where are the thousands of web applications I can't access without a XAML runtime? Miguel has attempted to lead us down this road before.
AJAX stopped XAML dead in its tracks, at a time when new Microsoft technologies were still considered unstoppable. Why should we believe that Silverlight will be any different?
I'd also like to remind everyone that even though Silverlight is intended to be a Flash Killer, none of the partnerships Microsoft has announced so far are "wins" from content providers previously committed to Flash. They're all content providers who were already using Windows Media and are simply going to take advantage of a better way of packaging it.
Finally, there is the issue of software patents. Novell has sold its soul and doesn't have to worry, but what about the rest of us?
Microsoft announced a few major partners who were going to adopt Silverlight. I wonder, however, whether any of those were "wins" of content providers who were previously using Flash video... or if they were merely content providers who were already using Windows Media and are merely going to take advantage of an easier way to distribute it.
If a lot of you, previously unexposed to the CLR gain access to it, you will discover that it is not the crap that so many of you have read it to be.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Using the.NET framework both hurts Java marketshare and props up Microsoft's marketshare, and their monopoly. Do you really want to hand even more keys-to-the-kingdom to Microsoft? What if, a few years from now,.NET pushes Java out of the market, and Microsoft gains a monopoly in this space? Do you really think.NET would ever improve?
Microsoft creates a better product only as a last resort. Without competition they will sit on their asses and collect monopoly rents. And that is why I cannot in good conscience use or recommend any Microsoft product or service.
The same sort of thing happened with corruption and monopolies; he largely disregarded the law in his quest to take down the Peruvian equivalent of our 19th century robber barons. Imagine where, if you wanted to buy a bar of soap, it was not only ridiculously priced, but you had to buy it as part of a "bundle" with other, less popular products that weren't selling.
Although the title of this story is a little misleading, I should point out that it is possible for something like a web-based OpenOffice to come into existence.
OpenOffice is built using a retargetable GUI framework -- that's what allows it to work on both Windows and Linux without the need to resort to cheap and sleazy WINE tricks. So, theoretically at least, it's possible to build a front end to OpenOffice that targets the browser as a remote desktop.
It is clear that what Microsoft is now trying to establish, is a Linux "patent pool" similar to the one in place for MPEG. If you're in the pool, you're fine; if not, you have to pay a per-unit royalty to the pool members in order to use it.
This, of course, is so infuriating that it makes most of us want to commit actual acts of homicide against the people pushing it.
Most corporations use the groupware in Exchange/Outlook, Thunderbird can't really compete there as it does not have a proper exchange equivalent to talk to.
Citadel is a good candidate for an open source "Exchange killer" and it works nicely with Thunderbird. If you have the Lightning calendar extension, it works with that too, and you can also connect your address book. Those are the big three, of course, but it goes deeper than that...
Citadel has issues. It's based on IMAP, and IMAP is messed up.
While I agree with you that IMAP is a poorly designed protocol, Citadel is not "based on" IMAP. IMAP is one of the many protocols it supports. If another protocol were to come into common usage, Citadel would be among the first to support it.
At least this is my superficial impression for m very limited testing.
Thanks for at least admitting that you haven't taken the time to perform a thorough evaluation.
Citadel also needs a dedicated desktop client for Linux and Windows.
Thanks for the suggestion, but the prevailing viewpoint right now is that it would be better to focus on providing a world-class server that offers standard protocols and services, instead of spending valuable developer time writing client software that would merely duplicate the effort of projects like Thunderbird. What may eventually happen, is the development of dedicated Citadel connectors for clients like Thunderbird/Lightning/Evolution/Kontact/etc. that will make them easier to integrate, instead of having to re-enter your account info once for incoming mail, once for outgoing mail, once for the calendar, etc.
Anyone else reading this: do check out Citadel; it really is a world-class open source Exchange killer.
Linux users do not pay for software; that's the nature of the beast. I've been running Linux full-time since the early 1.x versions, and I've never purchased a single piece of software for it. So I don't see what the incentive is for Microsoft to support Linux.
Because the revenue stream for a media player isn't the software itself. It's the value created by people publishing and viewing content that utilizes the media player. Microsoft would do well to make their Flash ripoff usable on Linux, because it would increase the potential audience, but making Linux more useful threatens their Windows cash cow. Not to mention this thing is probably loaded to the hilt with DRM, which is a bit harder to do on an open source operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't personally believe that Google is getting dethroned anytime soon, keep in mind that it has happened before. Back in the 1970's, all the Really Smart People (tm) in Silicon Valley worked for the mighty giant known as Fairchild Semiconductor. A few of them jumped ship to go work on their own, on this crazy idea they had to put an entire central processing unit on a single chip.
They put together a little startup called Intel.
...a study commissioned by Phillip Morris has revealed that people really do want to get lung cancer.
He won't say exactly what patents they are, but they probably include things like "Method and apparatus for sitting on your couch eating cheesy poofs while watching television" and "Method and apparatus for displaying television programs which contain blocks of programming separated by commercials."
So, they figured out a way to save their "Roaming Profiles" technology (which is horrendously unreliable) to a flash disk instead of just storing on the network. Big deal. The only "innovation" is the addition of DRM, which itself is predictable, and also a feature nobody wants.
Microsoft: providing you with Innovative Innovations (tm) to Microsoft SneakerNet (tm) at a time when everyone else is moving towards the "always-on" web profile.
One of the open source Exchange killers is Citadel, which there definitely are .deb's and repositories for. The reason you won't find Zimbra, Scalix, etc. there is because those products are not "true" open source; they're basically just stripped down versions of commercial products. The only reason Zimbra and Scalix are quasi open source in the first place is because they needed access to open source components like Postfix, MySQL, etc. Citadel is true community-developed open source.
Most of the open source groupware systems seem to have a non-free "pro" or "enterprise" version. If you're looking for something that's completely open source, you might want to try out Citadel [http://www.citadel.org]. It is community-developed and doesn't have the multi-tiered approach. Fully turnkey, nothing to integrate manually, and it has a nice ajax-based front end too. An Outlook connector is currently in beta, too.
I am a senior admin at a data center which is home to thousands of Dell servers, many of which run Linux. Our standard Linux build uses CentOS and therefore we order the machines with "no operating system installed." If Dell approaches us and tells us that they're going to forcibly move us over to Microsoft Linux (aka Novell/Ximian/SuSE) we will promptly tell them to go f**k themselves. And if they stop offering machines with blank hard disks, we will promptly switch vendors. I hear Sun's x86 offerings are competitively priced these days and I've just been itching for an excuse to go to them anyway.
A friend who used to work for Prodigy once told me that they had a peek at the MSN infrastructure and they discovered that in the mega-portal space, Windows requires twice as much hardware per unit of load as Unix systems. Yahoo is of course built around Unix. Are they really going to try to move that whole infrastructure over? Look at how long it took them to convert Hotmail.
Now it's three years later. Where are all of the XAML applications? Where are the thousands of web applications I can't access without a XAML runtime? Miguel has attempted to lead us down this road before.
AJAX stopped XAML dead in its tracks, at a time when new Microsoft technologies were still considered unstoppable. Why should we believe that Silverlight will be any different?
I'd also like to remind everyone that even though Silverlight is intended to be a Flash Killer, none of the partnerships Microsoft has announced so far are "wins" from content providers previously committed to Flash. They're all content providers who were already using Windows Media and are simply going to take advantage of a better way of packaging it.
Finally, there is the issue of software patents. Novell has sold its soul and doesn't have to worry, but what about the rest of us?
Microsoft announced a few major partners who were going to adopt Silverlight. I wonder, however, whether any of those were "wins" of content providers who were previously using Flash video ... or if they were merely content providers who were already using Windows Media and are merely going to take advantage of an easier way to distribute it.
Anyone know?
Microsoft creates a better product only as a last resort. Without competition they will sit on their asses and collect monopoly rents. And that is why I cannot in good conscience use or recommend any Microsoft product or service.
Citadel will populate an LDAP store if you so choose. Then you can point your favorite LDAP client at it.
Before some random dork starts spouting about how Thunderbird sux0rs because open source doesn't have an end-to-end Outlook/Exchange replacement...
:)
Thunderbird+Lightning connected to a Citadel server does the job quite nicely. Mail, calendar, contacts, all server-side and end-to-end, 100 percent open source.
Thanks for asking.
Although the title of this story is a little misleading, I should point out that it is possible for something like a web-based OpenOffice to come into existence.
OpenOffice is built using a retargetable GUI framework -- that's what allows it to work on both Windows and Linux without the need to resort to cheap and sleazy WINE tricks. So, theoretically at least, it's possible to build a front end to OpenOffice that targets the browser as a remote desktop.
It is clear that what Microsoft is now trying to establish, is a Linux "patent pool" similar to the one in place for MPEG. If you're in the pool, you're fine; if not, you have to pay a per-unit royalty to the pool members in order to use it.
This, of course, is so infuriating that it makes most of us want to commit actual acts of homicide against the people pushing it.
http://www.citadel.org
Citadel is a good candidate for an open source "Exchange killer" and it works nicely with Thunderbird. If you have the Lightning calendar extension, it works with that too, and you can also connect your address book. Those are the big three, of course, but it goes deeper than that...
Anyone else reading this: do check out Citadel; it really is a world-class open source Exchange killer.