1) Its open source, its not a question of tolerating Centos, its the way open source works.
2) The anecdotal evidence is seriously flawed. His buddy was running an old and unsupported version of Red Hat Linux (7.3), and they were not paying for a service subscription, and they decided to go with Centos and continue to not pay for a support subscription. Uhh, clue here, this did not effect Red Hat in any way, they are not Red Hat's target market, if it wasn't Centos it would have been some other distro.
3) And again, the conclusion is completely clueless. Red Hat does not change the way they do business becuase their business is based on open source. If Red Hat decided to develop their own closed source proprietary operating system they would lose the support and synergy of the massive open source community and their business would flop.
These articles are tiresome and poorly researched. Why is it that everyone believes the only way to have a viable business today is to create a monopoly and change the way you do business to ensure there is no competition that can "sting" you. Red Hat is doing an outstanding job of monetizing a viable market, linux service, support, and training. If Jeff wants to understand why Red Hat does not change their business model all he has to do is read up on the history of Caldera/The SCO Group to see what happens when a linux distributor changes their business model and tries to monetize off the "IP" instead of the service and support they were originally established to provide as a business model.
I think you either have that wrong or you need to clarify.
Bittorrent is not on shaky legal ground, it is a valid peer to peer file transfer protocol which is used for legal purposes. I've transfered many gigs of bits in downloading and sharing Fedora and Ubuntu linux distros, I've also used it to download commercial game demos such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. By your logic the entire internet is on shaky legal ground because all sorts of illegal activities traverse the backbone, does that mean we should shut down the entire internet?
And I'd hardly call Larry Flynt a "tame" playboy. (happy birthday Larry) And I'd also go further and say that the work Larry has done to protect his own free speech for works that many find distasteful has protected the free speech of others who have something much less morally questionable to communicate than the magazines Larry publishes. I believe that was the basis of Larry's arguements, if his free speech is restricted then where does it stop, do we restrict people from pointing out fraud and questionable deeds of governments and corporations. His objective was not to ensure there was free speech for something hardcore even though it would be protected as well, his objective was to protect free speech, period.
When you have a monopoly the only way to increase revenue beyond your current upgrade rate is to force your customer base to pay more for the same. The activation is Microsoft's attempt to force consumers to pay for multiple instances of an OS install where in the past without activation it was virtually impossible. Yes, they argue its to get pirates to pay but the truth is that pirates still don't pay even though the new versions require activation.
I'd have to say I agree with your requirements to consider Microsoft's OS, but I'd add a few:
1) The cost has to be significantly reduced. Considering the open source alternatives and the cost of reproducing a CD/DVD, the paper documentation, and shrink wrapping, their product is really only worth $15 to $30 and they'd still be making a nice profit.
2) Lose the stuipid licensing idiocy. If I have multiple PCs at home or I'm playing with virtualization at home their is no reason to pay a per install license. And drop the lame invasion of privacy clauses that allow kicking in my doors to look at my installs.
3) Stop holding back the industry with support for bogus lawsuits, marketing campaigns filled with lies, and paying off competitors to give you slack to continue illegally perpetuating a monopoly.
Even if there were guarantees to not sue Turbolinux customers, its moot. Microsoft can't stop patent trolls from filing lawsuits against linux distrubutors or users, and in fact it appears Microsoft will be using patent trolls as a proxy to fight off competition underhandedly rather than face a competitor on technical merit. A good reference for this unethical, and possibly illegal, tactic is the Microsoft-Baystar-SCO link in the now thoroughly debunked SCO vs IBM case concerning "Unix code in linux".
I've come to realize that this is a misconception. The patent system isn't broken, corrupt, or overwhelmed. Unfortunately, it is working exactly as it was designed.
From an early age we are taught idealist interpretations of patent law and how it is a wonderful tool to spur innovation, research, business, etc. and provide a level playing field for the little entrepreneur. However, when confronted with the reality of what patent law is, a forced impedement on human nature to invent and create which turns out to be contradictory to the idealistic intent, it is assumed it must be because it is broken.
http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/08/31/ben-franklin-on-patents/
In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated," etc. This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
An ironmonger in London however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, and making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho' not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes. The use of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the neighbouring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography Ben knew from the beginning that the patent system was a farce and would have unintended consequences and from its inception there are accounts of its use to enrich those who do not create or to impede a competitive free market.
If Ben was around today I'm sure he would approve of the open source movement and he would likely be called a smelly long haired communist and have chairs thrown at him.
do you truly think, say for instance, Windows registry &/or.ini files, filesystem security, & other areas like IP security are not taken into consideration when BOTH/ANY types of OS' are tested?
Did you read my reply? I don't have or use Windows so I have no idea what the tool checks or how accurate it is on a Windows box. I'm telling you that the score on a linux system is meaningless, as much as 50% of their tests are inaccurate and the only way to pass them would be to make changes to the system that would not enhance security and would just fake the score. Adding fake fstab entries, bogus X11 configuration files, installing iptables management packages from their accepted list, etc. to make the tool happy will produce an outstanding score. In fact I'm sure that by faking out the tool I can produce 100 out of 100 points, but it would be meaningless as the fake configuration files and system settings would do nothing to make the system secure.
I ran the CIS tool on a linux system, I reviewed the results and their scripts to determine what it didn't like, I even changed a few settings that made sense to improve the score, but in the end many of the results are bogus and meaningless. Your challenge is pointless and there would be no difference between gimping a screenshot, editing the html/xml result files or creating all the bogus system setttings to make the tool think a system passes with a 100% score.
Anybody who puts 10 minutes into testing the CIS tool on a linux system is going to come to the same conclusion, its an interesting and valuable auditing tool but as a benchmark for an OS security challenge it is a waste of time. Now if you want to pay me $75/hour to setup a linux box for you that scores 100 out of 100 on the CIS tool then I'll take you up on your challenge, but the box itself wont be anymore secure than one that may result in a score of 50 points.
outright RAN from a legit and valid test of security by the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY & not a single one could exceed my score of 85.185
Have you attempted to run the CIS benchmarking tool on any *nix installs?
I ask because I decided to dig into your challenge a bit deeper and what I've found is that the CIS tool for linux is a bit outdated and in some cases flat out incorrect in its analysis and resulting score for linux. That said, it is an interesting tool and does provide valuable hardening information, however, the resulting score is meaningless for any kind of comparison or challenge.
Specifically...
The tool give fails in a couple of tests for permissions on removeable media and fstab settings for media mounts but fails to take into account that the fstab entries don't even exist and the system has no removeable media (it was a headless web server).
The tool found some files that it didn't like the permissions on and gave a failed score but it didn't take into account that the files were protected by the selinux MAC and in fact the file permissions were meaningless for all but the approved contexts.
And then of course there were the failed scores because it was a web server and the benchmark tool suggested turning off apache and mysql. Without which it wouldn't be much of a web server.
Lots of failures for X11 stuff, but its a headless box and X isn't installed. The config files it tries to check don't even exist so it marks it up as a fail.
It goes on and on. Perhaps for Windows the CIS benchmark tool does a better job of analyzing an install, or perhaps its simply more up to date. For linux the CIS tool still needs a ton of work before it will produce accurate results for many of the latest linux distros.
So if your wondering why nobody is taking you up on your CIS benchmark score challenge its because the benchmark tool for linux is inaccurate. Making non-sensical changes to a working system to fake a higher score on the CIS tool is a waste of time.
That's quite a flatline if you tilt your head on the side.
The person who wrote that article either doesn't have a clue what they are doing with the statistics or they have learned to generate proper statistical lies.
When you look at the chart included with the article it does appear to be a flat line. Funny thing is they all appear to be pretty much flat lines. Since the scale on the chart is 100% so the growth in OS/X and linux are masked by the market share of WindowsXP. I have to deal with these lies occassionally and all you can do is thump them over the head with a statistical clue bat. I'm no statatician but when people start drawing statistical conclusions from pretty pictures instead of the raw numbers with a good analysis (anova, t-test, chi-squared, something) their conclusions are suspect.
If anything the numbers suggest that with support by PC vendors who are willing to sell and support PCs with linux preinstalled, there is a market. With no marketing and only recent support from a large PC vendor (Dell Ubuntu preinstalled) linux gets a nice up tick in market share. With more data points a true analysis can be completed to determine if there is a trend.
Anyone who suggests that market gains by the latest monopoly product in any way suggest an acceptance of the product are simply ignorant. What else would anyone expect for the monopoly product from the company that manipulates the market and coerces vendors.
Marketing involves half-truths, white lies, one-sided comparisons with competitors, massive amplififcation of small features, and a big dose of out-and-out bullshit.
Its an understandable mistake considering the level of fraud that is used in marketing but they are still not the same thing.
All Red Hat have to do is reflect in their marketing that their stuff works with Windows too - and I'm sure they already have people working on that.
Red Hat usually does put forth an effort to counter marketing FUD like this so I to expect to see a response. But its also nice to see such questionable marketing tactics criticized in the media and by a popular blogger.
Since day 1. This is the point of non free drivers. Some makers are better than others at "supporting" new and "legacy" Windoze, but you will never get everything you need unless you buy everything new every three years and throw away the old. It's intentional waste and that's what non free software is all about.
That is not completely true. The market for hardware that works for the existing installed OS base is huge and hardware manufacturers have always strived to tap into that market as well as the new system market. A quick perusal of Nvidia's driver download page shows that for the most part they have drivers available for multiple versions of Windows even for their latest chipsets.
But interestingly there are two specific multimedia chipsets that have vista only drivers. This is not the norm, something is afoul.
There has always been a long standing push-push relationship between the hardware and software manufacturers, I agree with that, and there has been a long standing vendor lock-in between hardware manufacturers and OS vendors, but this is something new.
In the past the arguement was that there was no market for Mac/linux/BSD/etc. drivers for specific hardware and that the market share of Windows was the reason to support only Windows, but there was always support of multiple versions of Windows so the hardware would work on new machines and on older machines. Now its narrowed down to a specific version of Windows that has minimal market share and by many accounts is struggling in the market with consumers demanding the previous OS version.
Call me a conspiracist if you will, but something is definitely wrong when hardware manufacturers are targeting a smaller market with their latest hardware.
Many Techs would call up almost in tears as they'd just procured 500 of these units and needed to roll them back to XP. I still don't see any certification or claims made on our new machines that guarantee 100% XP compatibility yet they still bitch and moan despite their own ignorance.
I think your assessment of the situation is wrong. It is not ignorance that placed them in their no-XP driver dilema, they were swindled, cheated, conned.
When did hardware manufacturers start making hardware for not just Windows only but for specific versions of Windows? If that is truely what is happening now then it must be the next step above Winmodems to force consumers to purchase a product they don't want and they don't need. What a crock.
If there is any ignorance on the part of these people who purchased "Vista" laptops its their foolish trust in their own wintel knowledge. How are they to know that there was to be a new level of vendor lock-in.
However, UNIX related patents were held by Novell, which may or may have not sold them (I'm not sure if they did).
If Novell truely did hold any patents on Unix methods and concepts a reading of the APA with Santa Cruz Operation (there was no agreement with The SCO Group) reveals that they were not sold. Santa Cruz Operation did not have the cash necessary to purchase Novell's Unix assets so instead the APA was an agreement to allow them to aministrate the Unix accounts at a 5% commission and develop their own derivative works from the Unix code.
The APA specifically excluded all intellectual property because Santa Cruz Operation didn't have the cash to pay Novell for it, plain and simple.
they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court
Actually that is not true. The SCO Groups claims have been thoroughly tested in the court system and The SCO Group are where they are today because the facts discovered in the SCO Group vs IBM case revealed that not only were they lying about finding millions of lines of infringing code but they knew full well they were lying.
Initially they claimed millions of lines of infringed code including line for line copying down to even the comments. When called on that bluff by IBM in the court they produced no evidence and the judge proclaimed an "astonishing lack of evidence" on the part of The SCO Group. Later it was revealed that internal SCO Group e-mails communicated the results of their own investigation of infringement in linux and found "aboslutely nothing" at which point their story changed and it was no longer literal copying but instead obfuscation of copied code. But still when they were compelled to produce the evidence which supported their claims they produce abosutlely nothing and instead changed their story again to claim that somehow they held ownership of "methods and concepts". Unfortunately The SCO Group holds no patents so they have no protected "methods and concepts" either.
This entire debacle was a scam from the beginning and it didn't go to a jury trial because the judge realized that The SCO Group's intention was to baffle the jury with the same bullcrap in hopes of making them believe that some how they must own something in linux when in fact they don't own squat.
Oh, this case has been tested, not just beyond a shadow of a doubt but beyond a frickin' eclipse of a doubt. Scumbags and grifters through and through.
under the circumstances of not wanting to comply with the GPL
It is your "not wanting to comply with the GPL" which requires you to re-implement.
What I object to, is the relicensing of my code, under a more-restrictive license, without the original attribution back to my license. If you want to relicense under GPL, fine. But if you don't also keep the BSD license that *I* licensed it under originally, that's not fine.
Absolutely. And rather than wrangling over legalities and licensing preferrences they should be clarifying the issue at hand and resolving it without all the politics and the attacks on the GPL.
As for your mischaracterisation of me as "disliking the GPL", I don't know where that came from.
It probably stems from your assertion that the GPL somehow forces restrictions on developers when in reality the restrictions are forced by their own decisions. Virtually all licenses aside from public domain are the same, including BSD. If you refuse to adhere to the license then you cannot legally use the code.
Perhaps I am reading too much into your comments, the mailing lists are currently filled with over the top assertions and accusations concerning the GPL and developers who release code under the license. While I am not a carreer developer, as it appears you are, I too have released code under the GPL and I understand that the licensing decision lies solely with the developer and his licensing requirements should be met or the code should be left alone.
It can be hard to see a perfectly good piece of code, that does exactly what you want, and then have to go and re-implement it yourself, but that's what the GPL requires, and that's what I do.
The GPL does not require you to re-implement, however, if you refuse to adhere to the GPL which made the code available to you in the first place then yes you must re-implement. The GPL did not force you into that situation, your need to avoid GPLing your own work is what forced the situation.
I think that if anyone relicenced any of my OS code under their own, more restrictive (to pluck an example out of the air: GPL rather than BSD) licence, I would be incensed. It remains to be seen if this has happened within Linux, and if it has, hard questions are going to require very good answers..
This makes absolutely no sense what so ever. You are okay with someone taking your code that you released under a BSD license and creating a closed source proprietary product which may restrict access to code, copying, reverse engineering, etc. etc., but when someone uses it to create a GPLed product you suddenly take issue? wtf? It seems that your quandary has more to do with your dislike of the GPL than it does with what someone does with your code. Even if the GPL were some ridiculous draconion software license removing all the rights of humanity their is no sense in whining about how the code was used when its being used in the way it was intended.
If the BSD license was not followed then there is an issue, but if the license was followed and the resulting code was released under the GPL then there is absolutely no issue.
I think this is a good question, and one that I've pondered as well. Considering the effort Microsoft is putting behind it they obviously have their reasons and I suspect a big one is just having the marketing bullet point saying their office software adheres to ISO standards. There are likely many governments and even big business customers that require their vendors to adhere to ISO standards. By pushing their proprietary garble through as a standard they can continue with their anti-competetive approach to the industry while appearing to use accepted standards.
I don't have the full details of the partner program, but the requirements for joining include x certified employees, y customer reviews, and the yearly fee (there is some other stuff depending on the type of partner). I don't know the full agreement, but I don't remember any section requiring us to vote in favor of any Microsoft proposal, bow to Gates, or to sacrifice a penguin on a ritualistic alter each morning.
Well, the news is in, and as usual when it smells like crap its a good bet it is crap. This voting fiasco smelled like the same old Microsoft illegal manipulation of an industry for their own benefit not through valid marketing, competition and cooperation but through coercion and corruption.
You may make light of the outrageous and at times outright illegal behaviour of Microsoft in their attempts to maintain a monopoly status on the desktop but for many in the industry who actually do try to compete in the market and provide value and innovation Microsoft is an ever present impediment not through the technical capability of their many engineers but through the pathetic back door dealings of their scumbag management.
Who paid?. Microsoft partners pay money to Microsoft for licenses. Was a discount offered or money exchanged?
Time will tell, it wouldn't be the first time the convicted monopoly was caught performing dirty deads to thwart competition.
If a community is full of Christians and they vote along their beliefs, does that mean the church controls the city?
Interesting analogy, as with politics, law, and economics, virtually every religion, christianity included, have a sordid history of corruption and abuse by leadership to further the will of a few. The day that Christian leaders stop spoon feeding politics to their flock from the pulpit is the day Christians begin to understand the issues they are voting on and allow their beliefs to guide their votes rather than their religuous leaders. Don't hold your breathe.
Here is a good question, of all the Microsoft partners who suddenly joined the Working Group how many can ellucidate on Microsoft's OOXML standard and the serious issues which have been brought up by its opponents?
Of all these new Microsoft partner members how many voted No because after their extensive study of Microsoft's proposal they felt compelled to side with the opponents? I can answer that one, zero.
Considering the market share of Microsoft products, is it possible that there would be more technical companies aligned with them than others?
Are they voting on a standard for use industry wide for cooperation and competition, or is the objective of the group to vote all other companies out of business? Its a standards committee, not a playground with bullies.
If a Microsoft partner voted against the standard, what happens to that vote?
Heh, a better question would be, if a Microsoft partner voted against Microsoft's proposal (its not a standard yet), will they remain a Microsoft partner?
23 companies with a common interest with Microsoft joined an organization to vote for something in their own interests
In which case it is no longer a standards committee but instead is a Microsoft edict committee. The purpose of a standards committe is to bring together multiple industry leaders to create and agree on a standard from which they can all cooperate and compete. If all it takes is for one company to throw cash at it, whether its their cash or that of their partners, then its no longer a standards committee but simply a group with a single interest forcing their edict on the entire industry.
they felt the need to virtualize that Linux-based OS under an RTOS.
More specifically, RTCore provides the Hard Real Time interrupt and thread handling as RTlinux alone is only Soft Real Time capable. But make no mistake, RTlinux is not used as an in flight entertainment system in the EFIS/One.
The following paper has a good description of what RTCore is and does for RTlinux.
While I would like to point out this is not about critical flight control systems (where I doubt any Linux would be certified as it costs a lot to be) and in-flight entertainment machines are OK to crash sometimes, the specific functionality is, probably, a win for Linux distros.
Doubt no more...
RTLinuxPro is shipping in the just released Gen4 EFIS/One glass cockpit from Blue Mountain Avionics. "Airspeed, Altitude and VSI, magnetically slaved all-attitude compass, HSI, solid state AHRS (Attitude Heading Reference System), a 12 channel GPS navigation engine and the highest resolution 3D terrain available. There's also a built in digital autopilot with altitude hold and ILS capture, a full air data computer with fuel burn and fuel totalizing functions, a flight planning system and digital monitoring of up to 32 engine gauges. The built in flight recorder and the new flight performance software, monitors flights, engine performance and much more."
Now obviously this is not your average linux distro, but then there are many reasons one could expect to find linux used in a flight control system, one of those reasons is the robust nature of linux and its reputation for not crashing. That's not to say that linux never crashes, but in my experience crashes involve running questionable code, i.e. closed source graphics drivers and the games that require those drivers.
All in all, the performance hit is obviously expected behaviour. I guess it's just the severity of the hit that's unexpected.
Exactly, they simply made a mis-calculation as to when customers would discover the defect. Hopefully they'll have something left for the next OS upgrade cycle besides this network issue. But then again Microsoft seems to be having improper timing on designed in defects on multiple products lately, note the X-Box 360 DVD lens defect that was designed in by eliminating the protective lens guards that prevent the laser lens from contacting the DVD disc on the original players from the manufacturer. Unfortunately drives started failing and trashing DVD discs long before the new X-Box Elite was released.
Does Ubuntu install selinux and a policy in a default installation, or is it necessary to add it later?
I've only performed one Ubuntu install and most of my experience is with Red Hat and Fedora linux distros. Fedora installs selinux with a targeted policy enforcing by default which I think is a good thing. I had an experimental Fedora web server with PHPbb installed which was comprimised via the PHPbb application but looking through the log files it appeared that selinux had thwarted attempts to root the box or setup a zombie to connect to an irc server.
Other than the mistake of an outdated PHPbb application I also made the mistake of allowing execution of code in/tmp, lesson learned. But it was interesting to see selinux do its job and I'd be curious if it was utilized in this instance.
Working in a large agency your management should be familiar with financial justifications and cost of ownership models which are necessary to determine whether such a major financial undertaking will have a cost benefit and whether it is the correct choice given the options. I for one dread working on either but you may be able to get some assistance from someone in your finance department if you collect the data ahead of time.
You will need the initial investment cost for each option, including the LAMP setup even though it is already in place, and you will need all the ongoing expenses over the projected life of the systems you put in place. Make sure you include EVERYTHING. The easy parts will be licensing costs for each software package and any CALs required for connections to the servers, service subscriptions, training, hardware, etc. Some areas can get tricky such as the cost of support infrastructure such as network, power, air conditioning, floor space, but do what you can to collect the numbers.
If possible your objective should be to produce a cost metric based on the service provided, i.e. $/page served, $/transaction, etc. That would help create an accurate comparison in the event there are significant performance differences in the choice of hardware/software.
But keep in mind, if your management is on a religious jihad driven by misconceptions and fraudulent claims about open source you will lose no matter how obvious it may appear that switching to another platform will have no financial benefit. Considering the huge cost and risk involved in swithing an existing platform and IT department over to.NET I suspect that is exactly what you are up against. If the financial justification for.NET shows that switching is a mistake and the TCO of the existing platform is better than.NET then be prepared to debate the data in your study and, probably more important, be prepared to counter all the non-sensical spew and lies you'll be faced with concerning the use of open source, i.e. its communism, its unsupported, its amateurish, ad infinitum.
As a senior developer it probably isn't a bad idea to go through the financial process just to get a handle on some of the terms the management and financial departments throw around like IRR, ROI, Hurdle Rate, etc.
The US lags because we set up our telcom infrastructure the first, and thus have the most primitive last-mile connections.
That seems like a reasonable arguement but if that were the case then with the massive housing boom we have been in for the past 10 years we should have a significant number of homes with the latest fiber optic last mile technology, but guess what, we dont.
I've watched thousands of houses go up and hundreds of new neighborhoods, and whats going in the ground you ask, the same coax and twisted pair copper they've been using for the past 30+ years.
And when people get fed up and try to band together to build there own fiber optic network because the digital robber barons refuse to invest in the latest technology do we finally get the latest technology, no we get lawyers and lobbying to turn citizens into criminals and outlaws.
And now with our pathetic outdated infrastructure that provides limited broadband at high prices what are the robber barons trying to do, drop their requirements for network neutrality and charge us and content providers even more for what we've already paid for.
Its not distance or age, its plain and simple greed and governmental complicity with illegal monpolization of markets. This country is getting passed by in the name of capitalism for the few and screw the other half.
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1) Its open source, its not a question of tolerating Centos, its the way open source works.
2) The anecdotal evidence is seriously flawed. His buddy was running an old and unsupported version of Red Hat Linux (7.3), and they were not paying for a service subscription, and they decided to go with Centos and continue to not pay for a support subscription. Uhh, clue here, this did not effect Red Hat in any way, they are not Red Hat's target market, if it wasn't Centos it would have been some other distro.
3) And again, the conclusion is completely clueless. Red Hat does not change the way they do business becuase their business is based on open source. If Red Hat decided to develop their own closed source proprietary operating system they would lose the support and synergy of the massive open source community and their business would flop.
These articles are tiresome and poorly researched. Why is it that everyone believes the only way to have a viable business today is to create a monopoly and change the way you do business to ensure there is no competition that can "sting" you. Red Hat is doing an outstanding job of monetizing a viable market, linux service, support, and training. If Jeff wants to understand why Red Hat does not change their business model all he has to do is read up on the history of Caldera/The SCO Group to see what happens when a linux distributor changes their business model and tries to monetize off the "IP" instead of the service and support they were originally established to provide as a business model.
burnin
shaky legal ground? "tame" playboy?
I think you either have that wrong or you need to clarify.
Bittorrent is not on shaky legal ground, it is a valid peer to peer file transfer protocol which is used for legal purposes. I've transfered many gigs of bits in downloading and sharing Fedora and Ubuntu linux distros, I've also used it to download commercial game demos such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. By your logic the entire internet is on shaky legal ground because all sorts of illegal activities traverse the backbone, does that mean we should shut down the entire internet?
And I'd hardly call Larry Flynt a "tame" playboy. (happy birthday Larry) And I'd also go further and say that the work Larry has done to protect his own free speech for works that many find distasteful has protected the free speech of others who have something much less morally questionable to communicate than the magazines Larry publishes. I believe that was the basis of Larry's arguements, if his free speech is restricted then where does it stop, do we restrict people from pointing out fraud and questionable deeds of governments and corporations. His objective was not to ensure there was free speech for something hardcore even though it would be protected as well, his objective was to protect free speech, period.
Heh, I'm sure that is a deal breaker.
When you have a monopoly the only way to increase revenue beyond your current upgrade rate is to force your customer base to pay more for the same. The activation is Microsoft's attempt to force consumers to pay for multiple instances of an OS install where in the past without activation it was virtually impossible. Yes, they argue its to get pirates to pay but the truth is that pirates still don't pay even though the new versions require activation.
I'd have to say I agree with your requirements to consider Microsoft's OS, but I'd add a few:
1) The cost has to be significantly reduced. Considering the open source alternatives and the cost of reproducing a CD/DVD, the paper documentation, and shrink wrapping, their product is really only worth $15 to $30 and they'd still be making a nice profit.
2) Lose the stuipid licensing idiocy. If I have multiple PCs at home or I'm playing with virtualization at home their is no reason to pay a per install license. And drop the lame invasion of privacy clauses that allow kicking in my doors to look at my installs.
3) Stop holding back the industry with support for bogus lawsuits, marketing campaigns filled with lies, and paying off competitors to give you slack to continue illegally perpetuating a monopoly.
Even if there were guarantees to not sue Turbolinux customers, its moot. Microsoft can't stop patent trolls from filing lawsuits against linux distrubutors or users, and in fact it appears Microsoft will be using patent trolls as a proxy to fight off competition underhandedly rather than face a competitor on technical merit. A good reference for this unethical, and possibly illegal, tactic is the Microsoft-Baystar-SCO link in the now thoroughly debunked SCO vs IBM case concerning "Unix code in linux".
I've come to realize that this is a misconception. The patent system isn't broken, corrupt, or overwhelmed. Unfortunately, it is working exactly as it was designed.
From an early age we are taught idealist interpretations of patent law and how it is a wonderful tool to spur innovation, research, business, etc. and provide a level playing field for the little entrepreneur. However, when confronted with the reality of what patent law is, a forced impedement on human nature to invent and create which turns out to be contradictory to the idealistic intent, it is assumed it must be because it is broken.
http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/08/31/ben-franklin-on-patents/ In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated," etc. This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
An ironmonger in London however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, and making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho' not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes. The use of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the neighbouring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography Ben knew from the beginning that the patent system was a farce and would have unintended consequences and from its inception there are accounts of its use to enrich those who do not create or to impede a competitive free market.
If Ben was around today I'm sure he would approve of the open source movement and he would likely be called a smelly long haired communist and have chairs thrown at him.
Did you read my reply? I don't have or use Windows so I have no idea what the tool checks or how accurate it is on a Windows box. I'm telling you that the score on a linux system is meaningless, as much as 50% of their tests are inaccurate and the only way to pass them would be to make changes to the system that would not enhance security and would just fake the score. Adding fake fstab entries, bogus X11 configuration files, installing iptables management packages from their accepted list, etc. to make the tool happy will produce an outstanding score. In fact I'm sure that by faking out the tool I can produce 100 out of 100 points, but it would be meaningless as the fake configuration files and system settings would do nothing to make the system secure.
I ran the CIS tool on a linux system, I reviewed the results and their scripts to determine what it didn't like, I even changed a few settings that made sense to improve the score, but in the end many of the results are bogus and meaningless. Your challenge is pointless and there would be no difference between gimping a screenshot, editing the html/xml result files or creating all the bogus system setttings to make the tool think a system passes with a 100% score.
Anybody who puts 10 minutes into testing the CIS tool on a linux system is going to come to the same conclusion, its an interesting and valuable auditing tool but as a benchmark for an OS security challenge it is a waste of time. Now if you want to pay me $75/hour to setup a linux box for you that scores 100 out of 100 on the CIS tool then I'll take you up on your challenge, but the box itself wont be anymore secure than one that may result in a score of 50 points.
Have you attempted to run the CIS benchmarking tool on any *nix installs?
I ask because I decided to dig into your challenge a bit deeper and what I've found is that the CIS tool for linux is a bit outdated and in some cases flat out incorrect in its analysis and resulting score for linux. That said, it is an interesting tool and does provide valuable hardening information, however, the resulting score is meaningless for any kind of comparison or challenge.
Specifically...
The tool give fails in a couple of tests for permissions on removeable media and fstab settings for media mounts but fails to take into account that the fstab entries don't even exist and the system has no removeable media (it was a headless web server).
The tool found some files that it didn't like the permissions on and gave a failed score but it didn't take into account that the files were protected by the selinux MAC and in fact the file permissions were meaningless for all but the approved contexts.
And then of course there were the failed scores because it was a web server and the benchmark tool suggested turning off apache and mysql. Without which it wouldn't be much of a web server.
Lots of failures for X11 stuff, but its a headless box and X isn't installed. The config files it tries to check don't even exist so it marks it up as a fail.
It goes on and on. Perhaps for Windows the CIS benchmark tool does a better job of analyzing an install, or perhaps its simply more up to date. For linux the CIS tool still needs a ton of work before it will produce accurate results for many of the latest linux distros.
So if your wondering why nobody is taking you up on your CIS benchmark score challenge its because the benchmark tool for linux is inaccurate. Making non-sensical changes to a working system to fake a higher score on the CIS tool is a waste of time.
The person who wrote that article either doesn't have a clue what they are doing with the statistics or they have learned to generate proper statistical lies.
When you look at the chart included with the article it does appear to be a flat line. Funny thing is they all appear to be pretty much flat lines. Since the scale on the chart is 100% so the growth in OS/X and linux are masked by the market share of WindowsXP. I have to deal with these lies occassionally and all you can do is thump them over the head with a statistical clue bat. I'm no statatician but when people start drawing statistical conclusions from pretty pictures instead of the raw numbers with a good analysis (anova, t-test, chi-squared, something) their conclusions are suspect.
If anything the numbers suggest that with support by PC vendors who are willing to sell and support PCs with linux preinstalled, there is a market. With no marketing and only recent support from a large PC vendor (Dell Ubuntu preinstalled) linux gets a nice up tick in market share. With more data points a true analysis can be completed to determine if there is a trend.
Anyone who suggests that market gains by the latest monopoly product in any way suggest an acceptance of the product are simply ignorant. What else would anyone expect for the monopoly product from the company that manipulates the market and coerces vendors.
You are confusing marketing with fraud.
Its an understandable mistake considering the level of fraud that is used in marketing but they are still not the same thing.
Red Hat usually does put forth an effort to counter marketing FUD like this so I to expect to see a response. But its also nice to see such questionable marketing tactics criticized in the media and by a popular blogger.
That is not completely true. The market for hardware that works for the existing installed OS base is huge and hardware manufacturers have always strived to tap into that market as well as the new system market. A quick perusal of Nvidia's driver download page shows that for the most part they have drivers available for multiple versions of Windows even for their latest chipsets.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
But interestingly there are two specific multimedia chipsets that have vista only drivers. This is not the norm, something is afoul.
There has always been a long standing push-push relationship between the hardware and software manufacturers, I agree with that, and there has been a long standing vendor lock-in between hardware manufacturers and OS vendors, but this is something new.
In the past the arguement was that there was no market for Mac/linux/BSD/etc. drivers for specific hardware and that the market share of Windows was the reason to support only Windows, but there was always support of multiple versions of Windows so the hardware would work on new machines and on older machines. Now its narrowed down to a specific version of Windows that has minimal market share and by many accounts is struggling in the market with consumers demanding the previous OS version.
Call me a conspiracist if you will, but something is definitely wrong when hardware manufacturers are targeting a smaller market with their latest hardware.
I think your assessment of the situation is wrong. It is not ignorance that placed them in their no-XP driver dilema, they were swindled, cheated, conned.
When did hardware manufacturers start making hardware for not just Windows only but for specific versions of Windows? If that is truely what is happening now then it must be the next step above Winmodems to force consumers to purchase a product they don't want and they don't need. What a crock.
If there is any ignorance on the part of these people who purchased "Vista" laptops its their foolish trust in their own wintel knowledge. How are they to know that there was to be a new level of vendor lock-in.
If Novell truely did hold any patents on Unix methods and concepts a reading of the APA with Santa Cruz Operation (there was no agreement with The SCO Group) reveals that they were not sold. Santa Cruz Operation did not have the cash necessary to purchase Novell's Unix assets so instead the APA was an agreement to allow them to aministrate the Unix accounts at a 5% commission and develop their own derivative works from the Unix code.
The APA specifically excluded all intellectual property because Santa Cruz Operation didn't have the cash to pay Novell for it, plain and simple.
Actually that is not true. The SCO Groups claims have been thoroughly tested in the court system and The SCO Group are where they are today because the facts discovered in the SCO Group vs IBM case revealed that not only were they lying about finding millions of lines of infringing code but they knew full well they were lying.
Initially they claimed millions of lines of infringed code including line for line copying down to even the comments. When called on that bluff by IBM in the court they produced no evidence and the judge proclaimed an "astonishing lack of evidence" on the part of The SCO Group. Later it was revealed that internal SCO Group e-mails communicated the results of their own investigation of infringement in linux and found "aboslutely nothing" at which point their story changed and it was no longer literal copying but instead obfuscation of copied code. But still when they were compelled to produce the evidence which supported their claims they produce abosutlely nothing and instead changed their story again to claim that somehow they held ownership of "methods and concepts". Unfortunately The SCO Group holds no patents so they have no protected "methods and concepts" either.
This entire debacle was a scam from the beginning and it didn't go to a jury trial because the judge realized that The SCO Group's intention was to baffle the jury with the same bullcrap in hopes of making them believe that some how they must own something in linux when in fact they don't own squat.
Oh, this case has been tested, not just beyond a shadow of a doubt but beyond a frickin' eclipse of a doubt. Scumbags and grifters through and through.
It is your "not wanting to comply with the GPL" which requires you to re-implement.
Absolutely. And rather than wrangling over legalities and licensing preferrences they should be clarifying the issue at hand and resolving it without all the politics and the attacks on the GPL.
It probably stems from your assertion that the GPL somehow forces restrictions on developers when in reality the restrictions are forced by their own decisions. Virtually all licenses aside from public domain are the same, including BSD. If you refuse to adhere to the license then you cannot legally use the code.
Perhaps I am reading too much into your comments, the mailing lists are currently filled with over the top assertions and accusations concerning the GPL and developers who release code under the license. While I am not a carreer developer, as it appears you are, I too have released code under the GPL and I understand that the licensing decision lies solely with the developer and his licensing requirements should be met or the code should be left alone.
The GPL does not require you to re-implement, however, if you refuse to adhere to the GPL which made the code available to you in the first place then yes you must re-implement. The GPL did not force you into that situation, your need to avoid GPLing your own work is what forced the situation.
This makes absolutely no sense what so ever. You are okay with someone taking your code that you released under a BSD license and creating a closed source proprietary product which may restrict access to code, copying, reverse engineering, etc. etc., but when someone uses it to create a GPLed product you suddenly take issue? wtf? It seems that your quandary has more to do with your dislike of the GPL than it does with what someone does with your code. Even if the GPL were some ridiculous draconion software license removing all the rights of humanity their is no sense in whining about how the code was used when its being used in the way it was intended.
If the BSD license was not followed then there is an issue, but if the license was followed and the resulting code was released under the GPL then there is absolutely no issue.
I think this is a good question, and one that I've pondered as well. Considering the effort Microsoft is putting behind it they obviously have their reasons and I suspect a big one is just having the marketing bullet point saying their office software adheres to ISO standards. There are likely many governments and even big business customers that require their vendors to adhere to ISO standards. By pushing their proprietary garble through as a standard they can continue with their anti-competetive approach to the industry while appearing to use accepted standards.
Well, the news is in, and as usual when it smells like crap its a good bet it is crap. This voting fiasco smelled like the same old Microsoft illegal manipulation of an industry for their own benefit not through valid marketing, competition and cooperation but through coercion and corruption.
You may make light of the outrageous and at times outright illegal behaviour of Microsoft in their attempts to maintain a monopoly status on the desktop but for many in the industry who actually do try to compete in the market and provide value and innovation Microsoft is an ever present impediment not through the technical capability of their many engineers but through the pathetic back door dealings of their scumbag management.
Yep, business as usual for the convicts.
Time will tell, it wouldn't be the first time the convicted monopoly was caught performing dirty deads to thwart competition.
Interesting analogy, as with politics, law, and economics, virtually every religion, christianity included, have a sordid history of corruption and abuse by leadership to further the will of a few. The day that Christian leaders stop spoon feeding politics to their flock from the pulpit is the day Christians begin to understand the issues they are voting on and allow their beliefs to guide their votes rather than their religuous leaders. Don't hold your breathe.
Here is a good question, of all the Microsoft partners who suddenly joined the Working Group how many can ellucidate on Microsoft's OOXML standard and the serious issues which have been brought up by its opponents?
Of all these new Microsoft partner members how many voted No because after their extensive study of Microsoft's proposal they felt compelled to side with the opponents? I can answer that one, zero.
Are they voting on a standard for use industry wide for cooperation and competition, or is the objective of the group to vote all other companies out of business? Its a standards committee, not a playground with bullies.
Heh, a better question would be, if a Microsoft partner voted against Microsoft's proposal (its not a standard yet), will they remain a Microsoft partner?
In which case it is no longer a standards committee but instead is a Microsoft edict committee. The purpose of a standards committe is to bring together multiple industry leaders to create and agree on a standard from which they can all cooperate and compete. If all it takes is for one company to throw cash at it, whether its their cash or that of their partners, then its no longer a standards committee but simply a group with a single interest forcing their edict on the entire industry.
More specifically, RTCore provides the Hard Real Time interrupt and thread handling as RTlinux alone is only Soft Real Time capable. But make no mistake, RTlinux is not used as an in flight entertainment system in the EFIS/One.
The following paper has a good description of what RTCore is and does for RTlinux.
http://vir.liu.se/~TDDB72/rtproj/reports2006/04-v
Doubt no more...
RTLinuxPro is shipping in the just released Gen4 EFIS/One glass cockpit from Blue Mountain Avionics.
"Airspeed, Altitude and VSI, magnetically slaved all-attitude compass, HSI, solid state AHRS (Attitude Heading Reference System), a 12 channel GPS navigation engine and the highest resolution 3D terrain available. There's also a built in digital autopilot with altitude hold and ILS capture, a full air data computer with fuel burn and fuel totalizing functions, a flight planning system and digital monitoring of up to 32 engine gauges. The built in flight recorder and the new flight performance software, monitors flights, engine performance and much more."
Now obviously this is not your average linux distro, but then there are many reasons one could expect to find linux used in a flight control system, one of those reasons is the robust nature of linux and its reputation for not crashing. That's not to say that linux never crashes, but in my experience crashes involve running questionable code, i.e. closed source graphics drivers and the games that require those drivers.
Exactly, they simply made a mis-calculation as to when customers would discover the defect. Hopefully they'll have something left for the next OS upgrade cycle besides this network issue. But then again Microsoft seems to be having improper timing on designed in defects on multiple products lately, note the X-Box 360 DVD lens defect that was designed in by eliminating the protective lens guards that prevent the laser lens from contacting the DVD disc on the original players from the manufacturer. Unfortunately drives started failing and trashing DVD discs long before the new X-Box Elite was released.
Does Ubuntu install selinux and a policy in a default installation, or is it necessary to add it later?
/tmp, lesson learned. But it was interesting to see selinux do its job and I'd be curious if it was utilized in this instance.
I've only performed one Ubuntu install and most of my experience is with Red Hat and Fedora linux distros. Fedora installs selinux with a targeted policy enforcing by default which I think is a good thing. I had an experimental Fedora web server with PHPbb installed which was comprimised via the PHPbb application but looking through the log files it appeared that selinux had thwarted attempts to root the box or setup a zombie to connect to an irc server.
Other than the mistake of an outdated PHPbb application I also made the mistake of allowing execution of code in
Working in a large agency your management should be familiar with financial justifications and cost of ownership models which are necessary to determine whether such a major financial undertaking will have a cost benefit and whether it is the correct choice given the options. I for one dread working on either but you may be able to get some assistance from someone in your finance department if you collect the data ahead of time.
.NET I suspect that is exactly what you are up against. If the financial justification for .NET shows that switching is a mistake and the TCO of the existing platform is better than .NET then be prepared to debate the data in your study and, probably more important, be prepared to counter all the non-sensical spew and lies you'll be faced with concerning the use of open source, i.e. its communism, its unsupported, its amateurish, ad infinitum.
You will need the initial investment cost for each option, including the LAMP setup even though it is already in place, and you will need all the ongoing expenses over the projected life of the systems you put in place. Make sure you include EVERYTHING. The easy parts will be licensing costs for each software package and any CALs required for connections to the servers, service subscriptions, training, hardware, etc. Some areas can get tricky such as the cost of support infrastructure such as network, power, air conditioning, floor space, but do what you can to collect the numbers.
If possible your objective should be to produce a cost metric based on the service provided, i.e. $/page served, $/transaction, etc. That would help create an accurate comparison in the event there are significant performance differences in the choice of hardware/software.
But keep in mind, if your management is on a religious jihad driven by misconceptions and fraudulent claims about open source you will lose no matter how obvious it may appear that switching to another platform will have no financial benefit. Considering the huge cost and risk involved in swithing an existing platform and IT department over to
As a senior developer it probably isn't a bad idea to go through the financial process just to get a handle on some of the terms the management and financial departments throw around like IRR, ROI, Hurdle Rate, etc.
That seems like a reasonable arguement but if that were the case then with the massive housing boom we have been in for the past 10 years we should have a significant number of homes with the latest fiber optic last mile technology, but guess what, we dont.
I've watched thousands of houses go up and hundreds of new neighborhoods, and whats going in the ground you ask, the same coax and twisted pair copper they've been using for the past 30+ years.
And when people get fed up and try to band together to build there own fiber optic network because the digital robber barons refuse to invest in the latest technology do we finally get the latest technology, no we get lawyers and lobbying to turn citizens into criminals and outlaws.
And now with our pathetic outdated infrastructure that provides limited broadband at high prices what are the robber barons trying to do, drop their requirements for network neutrality and charge us and content providers even more for what we've already paid for.
Its not distance or age, its plain and simple greed and governmental complicity with illegal monpolization of markets. This country is getting passed by in the name of capitalism for the few and screw the other half.