Well, besides writing good docs (which MacMillan actually does, BTW- I own one of their books and it is my bible) I suppose there are three ways I can think of off the top of my head: 1) give $$$ to coders to code (say, the FSF or SourceXchange or somesuch). Not only is this good for the community, if the company maintains a good relationship with the coders, they can publish the docs- mutually beneficial, I'd say. 2) hire coders of their own. This would be more difficult, since the company (apparently) has no goals for it's coders to work towards, but it is the "traditonial" route- VA, RH, and Cygnus are good examples of this, and it seems more credible- since the financial aspect (which is unappealing to many of us) is better hidden this way. 3) OpenSource their docs, or contribute to open-source doc projects. Think of what having a few full-time paid technical writers could do for the LDP... or how nice it would be to have something like Linux Unleashed in HTML, searchable and free.
1) You can buy a ~$40 RedHat CD from RedHat, which is basically a contribution to them- no support, but you help pay the RHAD people.
2) Most people won't just buy one of those Linux books (I happen to own the very good Linux Unleashed, which came with RH- from MacMillan). They don't understand that documentation with software bundled works just as well as software with documentation bundled, so (for the most part) RedHat is not competing with them.
3) The race to the bottom- that's the thing I've been searching for this whole time. Technically speaking, you could give RedHat away like AOL disks. But then where is the money going to come from to support the Labs and other things which have been very good for the community? I'm all for volunteerism, and think that that is the foundation everything else needs to be based on. But we have undeniably been helped by RedHat and VA- and they might lose out in the race towards virtually free Linux.
They do claim in the press release to be offering support, though it doesn't say who they are going to contract out to (if anyone at all.) Judging from your post, I can only assume it won't be RedHat:) ~luge
Is Mandrake getting money from MacMillan? Now, given that I only skimmed the press releases, but I saw nothing of the sort. If that is the case, and a significant portion of the money goes to Lothar coding, then wonderful.
However, I doubt that is the case- remember, nearly 1/5 of RH's income goes to GPL'd R&D. Somehow, I doubt 1/5 of Macmillan's income is going into Lothar R&D. If the portion is even 1/20, I'd be surprised. I see no sign that companies like MacMillan understand that the GPL legally allows them to take from the community, but also morally obliges them to give back. Clearly, it is possible (I think IBM understands this reasonably, if not perfectly) but I have not seen it yet from MacMillan. ~luge
Oh, OK- matter of clarification, then. RedHat distributes a LOT of non-GPL stuff, but they don't write any (except two hardware drivers, IIRC, which the sponsors eventually made open as a result of RedHat persuasion.) Everything they write is GPL, unlike, say, Suse's YAST. Since, AFAIK, they still haven't "seen the light" about distributing non-GPL stuff, I assume you meant stuff they had written. No hard feelings (except the generic "If you can't go to college, go to jail, if you can't go to jail, go to State!":) ~luge
Hmm... that's a pretty good idea, except for one thing: a lot of "us"[1] care, but most others don't, and RedHat can't survive just on our business.
What leverage can we use, then? I suppose Linus (by controlling the Linux trademark) could have some influence, perhaps denying the use of the name to those who don't meet your criteria, or... I dunno. I like the GPL, but I don't think RMS ever anticipated that there would be GPL based companies that might have legitimate reasons to need the leverage that the GPL intentionally removes. Argh... GPL 2.0 anyone?:) ~luge
Yeah, but you'll notice that MacMillan plans on offering support too. Probably just a little bit cheaper than RedHats, seeing as they aren't supporting any coders. Argh... ~luge
It's one thing to have more choice, but it is another thing to have a company that doesn't contribute to the community (like MacMillan) using their marketing and distributional power to undermine a company that writes and GPLs a lot of useful code (like RedHat). I think this is (unfortunately) where the mix of capitalism and the GPL will take us- a lot of cheap companies will rip off those who help out, killing them- and their contributions to the community. That's a damn shame...
We all know that the GPL allows one company to copy another's work. This happens all the time- I can think of at least five distros that are RedHat based. However, none of those distros is backed by a major company with a nation-wide distribution network. As a result, none of them are a serious threat to RedHat's income stream- which is how they fund all their GPL'd code. I'd really hate to see a large company make a lot of money off of RedHat's work just because they had the advantage of a larger distribution network, and were willing to abuse the openness of the GPL without contributing back to the community. If this is an ongoing trend, I'm not sure how companies that give back to the community (like RedHat and VA) will be able to continue to afford that overhead. ~luge
VA has a team of five working on the merced portm (mainly kernel, IIRC), with support from Intel. The EGCS team (through Cygnus) are working on the compiler, again with Intel support (since an NDA is required to get any access to emulators, and until recently, specs.) It'll be done on time, don't worry. ~luge
I'm occasionally surprised by the cultural references that the Onion pulls out of it's a**. As a longtime Phillip Dick fan, that was a pleasant nod to a modern master.
I spoke to them yesterday (I think i'm going to order a box from them today) and asked about that. Apparently, "their" 6 is not yet stable enough for their taste- they add a variety of mods and stuff that they want to make sure are perfectly integrated with their boxes before they ship. Also, "their" 5.2 ships with KDE and a 2.2 kernel (for SMP) so they don't feel all that pressed to upgrade immediately. I'm going to strip it and put Debian on it immediately anyway, but hey... more power to them for waiting until they get it right. ~luge (P.S.- the sales guy who told me all this was pissed at the delay too- he says he is sick of answering 6.0 questions:)
Hemos and Katx clearly got pre-release copies- anyone know when the masses (like myself) will be able to get their hands on it? ~luge
Re:Bombers vs. Archers, and other CTP oddities. .
on
CivCTP Patch Released
·
· Score: 1
That has happened since Civ 1- I just installed CTP, so I can't say if it is better or not, but the archers and bombers thing has always been a probably (even when Sid was still with them.) Apparently, Alpha Centauri (his new game) has similar flaws. Plus, in my mind, he's made that one a little too complex- the leadership personality thing unbalances the game a little too much for my taste. -luge
This particular camera doesn't do video anyway, unless directly plugged into the PC already. It's not very handy, though still photo quality is great. (A good friend has one... I'm just a little bit jealous:) -luge
I like the yellowdog people a lot, but yellowdog 1.0 was released so far before it was ready, and their support (on-line at least) is horrible. AFAICT, it's one brave guy (many, many kudos to you, Dan!) who has way too many hats to wear. Yellowdog 1.1 looks like it'll be a really good product, but if blacklab is anything like that, well... wait. Wait quite some time. I'm sure you'll see good product from them eventually. ~luge
Or the commercial community has a voice within _us_. You are right about it being a "like it or not" thing- since we get our software from each other and not from one source, we are tied together. As soon as we stop thinking of ourselves as a community, we are going to lose one of the big motivational tools that we have to get software done... and I think that we are doing just that by allowing corporate "thems" to speak for individuals like ourselves. ~luge (who doesn't intend to sound so RMSy, but...)
To quote verbatim: "This event is a unique opportunity for leaders in the Linux community to meet and discuss ways to ensure the success of the operating system (OS), and to accelerate the development of the OS and its applications."
further: "In addition, the forum will provide a central voice for the open source community."
That does not sounds strictly commercial to me, unfortunately. In my mind, the success of the OS depends not on groups like Corel, but on the programming community which created this thing in the first place and whose motivation is being slowly eroded by closed-source competition (like Corel's WordPerfect, which despite the noble talk about following what Corel's own CEO calls the "ideology" of the Linux movement, won't be even Open Source(tm), much less free. ~luge
Slashdot Mirror
Well, besides writing good docs (which MacMillan actually does, BTW- I own one of their books and it is my bible) I suppose there are three ways I can think of off the top of my head:
1) give $$$ to coders to code (say, the FSF or SourceXchange or somesuch). Not only is this good for the community, if the company maintains a good relationship with the coders, they can publish the docs- mutually beneficial, I'd say.
2) hire coders of their own. This would be more difficult, since the company (apparently) has no goals for it's coders to work towards, but it is the "traditonial" route- VA, RH, and Cygnus are good examples of this, and it seems more credible- since the financial aspect (which is unappealing to many of us) is better hidden this way.
3) OpenSource their docs, or contribute to open-source doc projects. Think of what having a few full-time paid technical writers could do for the LDP... or how nice it would be to have something like Linux Unleashed in HTML, searchable and free.
my three cents-
~luge
I don't think- I saw this earlier today (news.com, I think) and it will be $299 a seat.
~luge
1) You can buy a ~$40 RedHat CD from RedHat, which is basically a contribution to them- no support, but you help pay the RHAD people.
2) Most people won't just buy one of those Linux books (I happen to own the very good Linux Unleashed, which came with RH- from MacMillan). They don't understand that documentation with software bundled works just as well as software with documentation bundled, so (for the most part) RedHat is not competing with them.
3) The race to the bottom- that's the thing I've been searching for this whole time. Technically speaking, you could give RedHat away like AOL disks. But then where is the money going to come from to support the Labs and other things which have been very good for the community? I'm all for volunteerism, and think that that is the foundation everything else needs to be based on. But we have undeniably been helped by RedHat and VA- and they might lose out in the race towards virtually free Linux.
They do claim in the press release to be offering support, though it doesn't say who they are going to contract out to (if anyone at all.) Judging from your post, I can only assume it won't be RedHat :)
~luge
Is Mandrake getting money from MacMillan? Now, given that I only skimmed the press releases, but I saw nothing of the sort. If that is the case, and a significant portion of the money goes to Lothar coding, then wonderful.
However, I doubt that is the case- remember, nearly 1/5 of RH's income goes to GPL'd R&D. Somehow, I doubt 1/5 of Macmillan's income is going into Lothar R&D. If the portion is even 1/20, I'd be surprised. I see no sign that companies like MacMillan understand that the GPL legally allows them to take from the community, but also morally obliges them to give back. Clearly, it is possible (I think IBM understands this reasonably, if not perfectly) but I have not seen it yet from MacMillan.
~luge
At that point, isn't it just Mandrake?
~luge
Oh, OK- matter of clarification, then. RedHat distributes a LOT of non-GPL stuff, but they don't write any (except two hardware drivers, IIRC, which the sponsors eventually made open as a result of RedHat persuasion.) Everything they write is GPL, unlike, say, Suse's YAST. Since, AFAIK, they still haven't "seen the light" about distributing non-GPL stuff, I assume you meant stuff they had written. No hard feelings (except the generic "If you can't go to college, go to jail, if you can't go to jail, go to State!" :)
~luge
Hmm... that's a pretty good idea, except for one thing: a lot of "us"[1] care, but most others don't, and RedHat can't survive just on our business.
/. readers who remember TCWWW(tm) :)
What leverage can we use, then? I suppose Linus (by controlling the Linux trademark) could have some influence, perhaps denying the use of the name to those who don't meet your criteria, or... I dunno. I like the GPL, but I don't think RMS ever anticipated that there would be GPL based companies that might have legitimate reasons to need the leverage that the GPL intentionally removes. Argh... GPL 2.0 anyone?:)
~luge
[1]read:
Yeah, but you'll notice that MacMillan plans on offering support too. Probably just a little bit cheaper than RedHats, seeing as they aren't supporting any coders. Argh...
~luge
It's one thing to have more choice, but it is another thing to have a company that doesn't contribute to the community (like MacMillan) using their marketing and distributional power to undermine a company that writes and GPLs a lot of useful code (like RedHat). I think this is (unfortunately) where the mix of capitalism and the GPL will take us- a lot of cheap companies will rip off those who help out, killing them- and their contributions to the community. That's a damn shame...
"Nope, RedHat learned the error of their ways and went completely Open Source, but I doubt these guys ever will."
:)
A correction: redhat has always been GPL. Don't slam them until you know what you are talking about. (Silly S&M grads
~luge
We all know that the GPL allows one company to copy another's work. This happens all the time- I can think of at least five distros that are RedHat based. However, none of those distros is backed by a major company with a nation-wide distribution network. As a result, none of them are a serious threat to RedHat's income stream- which is how they fund all their GPL'd code. I'd really hate to see a large company make a lot of money off of RedHat's work just because they had the advantage of a larger distribution network, and were willing to abuse the openness of the GPL without contributing back to the community. If this is an ongoing trend, I'm not sure how companies that give back to the community (like RedHat and VA) will be able to continue to afford that overhead.
~luge
VA has a team of five working on the merced portm (mainly kernel, IIRC), with support from Intel. The EGCS team (through Cygnus) are working on the compiler, again with Intel support (since an NDA is required to get any access to emulators, and until recently, specs.) It'll be done on time, don't worry.
~luge
I'm occasionally surprised by the cultural references that the Onion pulls out of it's a**. As a longtime Phillip Dick fan, that was a pleasant nod to a modern master.
Umm, actually, they have several employees dedicated full-time to coding.
Beats me...
I spoke to them yesterday (I think i'm going to order a box from them today) and asked about that. Apparently, "their" 6 is not yet stable enough for their taste- they add a variety of mods and stuff that they want to make sure are perfectly integrated with their boxes before they ship. Also, "their" 5.2 ships with KDE and a 2.2 kernel (for SMP) so they don't feel all that pressed to upgrade immediately. I'm going to strip it and put Debian on it immediately anyway, but hey... more power to them for waiting until they get it right. :)
~luge
(P.S.- the sales guy who told me all this was pissed at the delay too- he says he is sick of answering 6.0 questions
It's bad enough when some AC does this... "real people" should have their registrations yanked...
~luge
Hemos and Katx clearly got pre-release copies- anyone know when the masses (like myself) will be able to get their hands on it?
~luge
That has happened since Civ 1- I just installed CTP, so I can't say if it is better or not, but the archers and bombers thing has always been a probably (even when Sid was still with them.) Apparently, Alpha Centauri (his new game) has similar flaws. Plus, in my mind, he's made that one a little too complex- the leadership personality thing unbalances the game a little too much for my taste.
-luge
This particular camera doesn't do video anyway, unless directly plugged into the PC already. It's not very handy, though still photo quality is great. (A good friend has one... I'm just a little bit jealous :)
-luge
I like the yellowdog people a lot, but yellowdog 1.0 was released so far before it was ready, and their support (on-line at least) is horrible. AFAICT, it's one brave guy (many, many kudos to you, Dan!) who has way too many hats to wear. Yellowdog 1.1 looks like it'll be a really good product, but if blacklab is anything like that, well... wait. Wait quite some time. I'm sure you'll see good product from them eventually.
~luge
Don't know how you found this, but wow... that is scary...
Or the commercial community has a voice within _us_. You are right about it being a "like it or not" thing- since we get our software from each other and not from one source, we are tied together. As soon as we stop thinking of ourselves as a community, we are going to lose one of the big motivational tools that we have to get software done... and I think that we are doing just that by allowing corporate "thems" to speak for individuals like ourselves.
~luge (who doesn't intend to sound so RMSy, but...)
To quote verbatim:
"This event is a unique opportunity for leaders in the Linux community to meet and discuss ways to ensure the success of the operating system (OS), and to accelerate the development of the OS and its applications."
further:
"In addition, the forum will provide a central voice for the open source community."
That does not sounds strictly commercial to me, unfortunately. In my mind, the success of the OS depends not on groups like Corel, but on the programming community which created this thing in the first place and whose motivation is being slowly eroded by closed-source competition (like Corel's WordPerfect, which despite the noble talk about following what Corel's own CEO calls the "ideology" of the Linux movement, won't be even Open Source(tm), much less free.
~luge