But that's the thing. Linux is all about grassroots. _Small_ companies are the ones benefitting most from Linux, as it should be. Small consulting firms. Individual contractors. IT staffs doing free software development to benefit their company. It's misguided to think that the software industry _needs_ a big company producing all of its software. All it needs are individual developers and small consulting firms each helping their clients, and publishing the generally useful stuff to the internet.
RedHat has stated that they don't want to become a billion-dollar corporation like Microsoft, but instead they would rather make the OS a commodity, bringing MS down to a 100-million dollar company. There _won't_ be any Microsofts under Linux. That's the point.
You're missing the point of free software. It's about freedom. As long as the people who bought the product have full freedom to use it how they wish, that's the whole point. And, free software is _not_ a resume builder. The part of their work that is useful to everyone is packaged up for the community (compiler, debugger, etc). That's stuff they _use_. They didn't just make it saying "now we'll get more business". That's stuff they use in their consulting.
What about Cygnus? They get paid millions of dollars to port gcc to new hardware platforms. It's about _solutions_. Free software is only about software. Giving away software doesn't hurt if you are a solutions provider. The software is necessary, but not what people are after. So why not be moral and give it freedom?
If you are a consulting company, you don't even need to publish your code to be a free software company. All you have to do is give the companies you consult for full access to the code under the GPL. You don't have to publish it to a web site or make it available to anyone else. But you are still being moral. To quote RMS - it's not about price, it's about freedom. There are many packages which are available at no cost, but the emphasis is on the freedom.
Ada Core Technologies. I's sure their making money because their not IPO and they've been around for quite some time. http://www.gnat.com/
Cygnus solutions. That's why RedHat bought them. Both of these companies were doing free software long before it was "cool".
Re:Who's made the model work?
on
Mundie Responds
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· Score: 2
JFS. Postfix. Linux for the S/390. Kernel work. Linux for the AS/400. The POP board. And the stuff mentioned in the other post.
Which is true. The question is about ethics. It doesn't matter if doing the right thing is good or bad for business, you do it because it's the right thing. Very strange coming from an atheist, but oh well.
Cygnus. ReadySetNet. CollabNet. Ada Core Technologies.
The difference between free software and proprietary software, is that free software gets developed as part of a total system. The bits that are interesting for the community at large get shared. In such a model, consulting firms are the big players, as well they should be. There's no reason for a company to produce Free OSs as their bread-and-butter. The ones that knew that are doing well (RedHat, for example). RedHat produces its version of Linux as a base technology for other services (no, I'm not talking about tech support). They can say, "look at our RedHat 7.1 - don't you think you should hire us to do your missile guidance systems?"
Re:Who's made the model work?
on
Mundie Responds
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· Score: 2
Actually, the interesting thing is that Oracle is the only one of those who relies on their software. IBM switched to open-source because they found that their current software model wasn't sustainable. Sun has always been pretty open with software, and even more so recently. They make almost all of their money off hardware. HP is basically a hardware company. Oracle is basically a consulting company (I imagine sales of the database doesn't _nearly_ compare to sales of their consulting).
So, it still seems to stand that Microsoft is the only pure-play closed-source company that's really big. Everyone else seems to be focusing either on (a) hardware or (b) total solutions.
In fact, my contention is that there _shouldn't_ be any pure software companies at all. Everything should stem from consulting or total solutions.
This is not entirely true. This would only be true if the binary included the GPL license. Otherwise, they can release it under any license they choose, even if they have released the source code under the GPL.
They were talking about Exchange _server_. Currently there is no free one, nor can Ximian currently provide a complete solution, since they don't control any of these apps.
Nautilus runs better for me than GMC. Did you use the Ximian release or another one? My machine is only a PII-200 w/ 64M.
Also, Gtk+ isn't dependent on Gnome or KDE, either. I hate Motif with a passion. Mozilla 0.9 with Galeon 0.10.6 is a rockin combination. Try it out! Although, Galeon does require Gnome.
I don't know of any that have been withdrawn, but many are licensed under more restrictive licenses to others (QT being an example) who don't want to participate in the community. Because they own the copyright, they can do this.
The reason is that Oracle, by default, has been using rule-based optimizations for quite some time. It has cost-based optimizations, but they aren't turned on by default (actually, I think they are in 8i). Noone uses them because their queries are now so optimized for rule-based, that switching to cost-based would make it quite unpredictable. Oracle Applications 11.0.3 and earlier is made/optimized for rule-based queries. For any given query, you can turn on cost-based optimizations by adding a specially-formatted comment (forget what this is at the moment). Anyway, Oracle Apps 11i w/ Oracle 8i is supposed to have cost-based optimizations by default. Now, rule-based optimization is more tradition than anything.
Please note that much of this comment is hearsay from what the DB guys are saying. I try to stay out of most of the Oracle stuff myself, unless I have to mess with it.
Anyway, I'm curious whose cost-based optimizer is best.
Whoever you bought your product from. If I buy it from RH, they are responsible.
With free software you get whatever you want. You want access to the source? You got it. You want to pay someone else to be held accountable? You got it. Anything is possible.
That only works if the compiler can detect the routines which generate output. Given a new compiler or a significantly revised version of the compiler, this will not work. So, if I have two compilers, compiler A and B, I can use one to compile the other, and then compile the first one again, and I'll have a clean compiler.
It didn't lack consideration. They, like many companies, planned on having a second round of funding. That was a part of the plan. The dot-com bust prevented that second round. It happens. It's not the way I would run a business, but it's probably on better footing than a lot of other businesses in the last few years.
Actually, Ximian _is_ making money. HP (and Sun, I think) are paying them to give their hardware first-class ports of GNOME. Why? Because it makes their hardware more valuable.
Ximian does have an income flow. However, I don't believe it is currently at a level that makes it profitable. But at least they do have income, and plans on how to make more.
Re:Good riddance to yet another bad business model
on
Eazel Come, Eazel Go?
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· Score: 2
Actually, they can do it with gnome, because the gnome libraries are mostly LGPL, which allows proprietary programs.
Corporate documents have much different needs than programs. Documents need to be searchable, categorized, approved, etc. You need something that will tag a document with
* Current Version
* Related Categories
* Awaiting Approvals
* Approvals Received
* Place in the system
* What time to re-review
* Notes for a document
This way, anyone can easily find a document, and find any past versions. New documents will have to go through a formal approval process, and people will be automatically notified when documents need to be re-reviewed. Notes can be attached for clarification and questions.
CVS can do versioning, but not the rest. And, CVS's versioning is MUCH too complex for what you need. You don't need branches/tags/everything else with corporate documents. You are never going to merge between branches. You just have the document and its version.
It's true. I ran bonnie++ on a test machine under ext2 and xfs. xfs had REALLY slow deletes, but fast throughput. XFS did 36 deletes per second, while ext2 did 802 deletes per second. As far as throughput, XFS did 538K/sec on block reads, while ext2 only got 436. Also, in general, xfs used less CPU resources. Also, ext2 kicked xfs's butt in all areas when there was only one bonnie++ process running. The benchmark data I've given was running three simultaneously on the filesystem. So, if the server only has one process, I'd NOT go with xfs. If the server has multiple processes, xfs probably beats most things, especially on block read performance.
Note, also, that my test machine was only a AMD K6-2 266 w/28M RAM
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Have you tried gnumeric? Very, very good.
Yay! Someone gets it! Yay!
But that's the thing. Linux is all about grassroots. _Small_ companies are the ones benefitting most from Linux, as it should be. Small consulting firms. Individual contractors. IT staffs doing free software development to benefit their company. It's misguided to think that the software industry _needs_ a big company producing all of its software. All it needs are individual developers and small consulting firms each helping their clients, and publishing the generally useful stuff to the internet.
RedHat has stated that they don't want to become a billion-dollar corporation like Microsoft, but instead they would rather make the OS a commodity, bringing MS down to a 100-million dollar company. There _won't_ be any Microsofts under Linux. That's the point.
You're missing the point of free software. It's about freedom. As long as the people who bought the product have full freedom to use it how they wish, that's the whole point. And, free software is _not_ a resume builder. The part of their work that is useful to everyone is packaged up for the community (compiler, debugger, etc). That's stuff they _use_. They didn't just make it saying "now we'll get more business". That's stuff they use in their consulting.
What about Cygnus? They get paid millions of dollars to port gcc to new hardware platforms. It's about _solutions_. Free software is only about software. Giving away software doesn't hurt if you are a solutions provider. The software is necessary, but not what people are after. So why not be moral and give it freedom?
If you are a consulting company, you don't even need to publish your code to be a free software company. All you have to do is give the companies you consult for full access to the code under the GPL. You don't have to publish it to a web site or make it available to anyone else. But you are still being moral. To quote RMS - it's not about price, it's about freedom. There are many packages which are available at no cost, but the emphasis is on the freedom.
Ada Core Technologies. I's sure their making money because their not IPO and they've been around for quite some time. http://www.gnat.com/
Cygnus solutions. That's why RedHat bought them. Both of these companies were doing free software long before it was "cool".
JFS. Postfix. Linux for the S/390. Kernel work. Linux for the AS/400. The POP board. And the stuff mentioned in the other post.
Which is true. The question is about ethics. It doesn't matter if doing the right thing is good or bad for business, you do it because it's the right thing. Very strange coming from an atheist, but oh well.
And, there are a lot of successful free software companies, but most of them aren't as high-visibility as RedHat.
Cygnus. ReadySetNet. CollabNet. Ada Core Technologies.
The difference between free software and proprietary software, is that free software gets developed as part of a total system. The bits that are interesting for the community at large get shared. In such a model, consulting firms are the big players, as well they should be. There's no reason for a company to produce Free OSs as their bread-and-butter. The ones that knew that are doing well (RedHat, for example). RedHat produces its version of Linux as a base technology for other services (no, I'm not talking about tech support). They can say, "look at our RedHat 7.1 - don't you think you should hire us to do your missile guidance systems?"
Actually, the interesting thing is that Oracle is the only one of those who relies on their software. IBM switched to open-source because they found that their current software model wasn't sustainable. Sun has always been pretty open with software, and even more so recently. They make almost all of their money off hardware. HP is basically a hardware company. Oracle is basically a consulting company (I imagine sales of the database doesn't _nearly_ compare to sales of their consulting).
So, it still seems to stand that Microsoft is the only pure-play closed-source company that's really big. Everyone else seems to be focusing either on (a) hardware or (b) total solutions.
In fact, my contention is that there _shouldn't_ be any pure software companies at all. Everything should stem from consulting or total solutions.
Actually, the invention of the virus was done to help systems. They were meant to be autonomous mobile agents, examining the computer and tweaking it.
This is not entirely true. This would only be true if the binary included the GPL license. Otherwise, they can release it under any license they choose, even if they have released the source code under the GPL.
They were talking about Exchange _server_. Currently there is no free one, nor can Ximian currently provide a complete solution, since they don't control any of these apps.
Nautilus runs better for me than GMC. Did you use the Ximian release or another one? My machine is only a PII-200 w/ 64M.
Also, Gtk+ isn't dependent on Gnome or KDE, either. I hate Motif with a passion. Mozilla 0.9 with Galeon 0.10.6 is a rockin combination. Try it out! Although, Galeon does require Gnome.
I don't know of any that have been withdrawn, but many are licensed under more restrictive licenses to others (QT being an example) who don't want to participate in the community. Because they own the copyright, they can do this.
Emblems are _very_ useful.
Nautilus 1.0.2 works wonderfully, even on small systems (at least it works well on my PII-200 64M). 1.0.3 apparently is even zippier.
The reason is that Oracle, by default, has been using rule-based optimizations for quite some time. It has cost-based optimizations, but they aren't turned on by default (actually, I think they are in 8i). Noone uses them because their queries are now so optimized for rule-based, that switching to cost-based would make it quite unpredictable. Oracle Applications 11.0.3 and earlier is made/optimized for rule-based queries. For any given query, you can turn on cost-based optimizations by adding a specially-formatted comment (forget what this is at the moment). Anyway, Oracle Apps 11i w/ Oracle 8i is supposed to have cost-based optimizations by default. Now, rule-based optimization is more tradition than anything.
Please note that much of this comment is hearsay from what the DB guys are saying. I try to stay out of most of the Oracle stuff myself, unless I have to mess with it.
Anyway, I'm curious whose cost-based optimizer is best.
Whoever you bought your product from. If I buy it from RH, they are responsible.
With free software you get whatever you want. You want access to the source? You got it. You want to pay someone else to be held accountable? You got it. Anything is possible.
That only works if the compiler can detect the routines which generate output. Given a new compiler or a significantly revised version of the compiler, this will not work. So, if I have two compilers, compiler A and B, I can use one to compile the other, and then compile the first one again, and I'll have a clean compiler.
It didn't lack consideration. They, like many companies, planned on having a second round of funding. That was a part of the plan. The dot-com bust prevented that second round. It happens. It's not the way I would run a business, but it's probably on better footing than a lot of other businesses in the last few years.
Actually, Ximian _is_ making money. HP (and Sun, I think) are paying them to give their hardware first-class ports of GNOME. Why? Because it makes their hardware more valuable.
Ximian does have an income flow. However, I don't believe it is currently at a level that makes it profitable. But at least they do have income, and plans on how to make more.
Actually, they can do it with gnome, because the gnome libraries are mostly LGPL, which allows proprietary programs.
Corporate documents have much different needs than programs. Documents need to be searchable, categorized, approved, etc. You need something that will tag a document with
* Current Version
* Related Categories
* Awaiting Approvals
* Approvals Received
* Place in the system
* What time to re-review
* Notes for a document
This way, anyone can easily find a document, and find any past versions. New documents will have to go through a formal approval process, and people will be automatically notified when documents need to be re-reviewed. Notes can be attached for clarification and questions.
CVS can do versioning, but not the rest. And, CVS's versioning is MUCH too complex for what you need. You don't need branches/tags/everything else with corporate documents. You are never going to merge between branches. You just have the document and its version.
Actual MSs product is crap. There is an add-on, though, called SourceOffsite, which is much, much better see http://www.sourcegear.com/
It's true. I ran bonnie++ on a test machine under ext2 and xfs. xfs had REALLY slow deletes, but fast throughput. XFS did 36 deletes per second, while ext2 did 802 deletes per second. As far as throughput, XFS did 538K/sec on block reads, while ext2 only got 436. Also, in general, xfs used less CPU resources. Also, ext2 kicked xfs's butt in all areas when there was only one bonnie++ process running. The benchmark data I've given was running three simultaneously on the filesystem. So, if the server only has one process, I'd NOT go with xfs. If the server has multiple processes, xfs probably beats most things, especially on block read performance.
Note, also, that my test machine was only a AMD K6-2 266 w/28M RAM