Now I can buy my favorite music for $5 instead of $17, since I really only like five or so songs on each cd. On some poor cd's, I only like one or two songs. Now the pressure is on musicians to make not just 10 decent songs on a cd, but 10 hits on a cd. Singles may become even more popular now. And for the record, Apple is hiring a Windows engineer to port it to Windows. What I really want is iTunes running on Linux. That would rock! The second best new feature of iTunes is the rendesvous enabled music serving. I can have one set of music on one Mac, and play on my other three Macs (with much smaller hard drives, I might add). But the one Mac has an 80GB hard drive and can store my whole collection. Pretty sweet.
I find this very funny: quoted from the firebirdsql letter on MozillaZine, "A browser is very much like a database". Wow, that's definitely what I was thinking too. Come to think of it, a database is also a lot like a car. They have been infringing on the Pontiac FireBird all this time! Call the lawyers!
The basic gist of the complaint is that they are attempting to rebrand Spiderman as a Sony product.
Yeah, I can see it now. Buy the Sony Spiderman laptop. It's a super lightweight laptop with a special built-in spider sense which reacts beforehand when it sees Windows is about to crash. If anyone tries to steal it, it covers them in spiderwebs. It even suspends itself from the ceiling for convenient usage in places with no desks.
"Ah, look at the size of they boy's heed! It's huge! It's like sputnik! Well I'm not kiddin', that's a huge noggin! It's like an orange stuck on a toothpeck! It's a virtual planetoid! A bit spherical, but pointy in parts. Ahh, that was a bit over the line, wasn't et? He's gonna cry himself to sleep on 'es huge pilla!"
Ambrosia created a slew of the best shareware games ever seen for Mac, starting in 1992. They proved that shareware could actually be profitable. The quality of these games puts some commercial games to shame - it's on par with Nintendo's bug-free quality. The one that made them famous, Maelstrom, was ported to Linux. Ambrosia's games have historically been highly, highly addictive, especially Escape Velocity and it's sequels. I have to wonder, though, how well received they will be in the PC market which has an order of magnitude more games than the Mac.
I have a friend who created a fairing for his motorcycle which allowed him to get 250 miles per gallon. I think it got 80 before he did that, but anyways, I would much rather go for one of those since you don't have to keep stopping at the gas station, and you can go faster with it. Also, the recumbent bicycles with fairings can go wicked fast with just a little effort and don't have the troubles of an engine either (it's easy to push 30 MPH on one of those).
Overheard in the Chinese consulate earlier this morning... "Hmm.. Ok, install the source code from cd. ActiveX.cp, KernelDLL source.. Hey, wait a minute! I recognize this source code! This isn't the Windows source, it's Linux!"
But seriously, what's to prevent someone from taking the Windows source code and porting it to their own Linux distro? I think Microsoft just put another nail in their grave.
Like, oh my gawd, me and Steve Jobs were hanging out at the Jaguar release party at the Palo Alto Apple store last week, and I said, "Like, Steve, are you, like, going to make Jaguar run on PC's? Like, gag me with a spoon!" and Steve said, "Well, you know how it is man. I was just looking at those PC's, I started to trip out, and I said, man, those PC's are so much faster. I was just trippin' out and stuff."
Apple doesn't have any app vendors. They've all flown ship. That's why there are so many unemployed Mac programmers in silicon valley, and also why Apple is providing such a large free software bundle with Mac OS X.
The problem with hiring a good programmer is you don't know how good they are until they've been working for you for around six months. Then the real problems come in when they act like they're working but don't put anything out. No amount of interviewing is going to help you there - you should contract these people for one month at a time with the understanding that you will renew the contract if they perform well. If their performance starts to really slack off after a few months, then you know they're burnouts. You'll also know if you want them around after any other problems. Motivation is the key factor in development. I can name off many many programmers who know a lot but don't like to work. Looking for a college degree doesn't help either. If someone can program insanely well without anyone showing them how, would you think they were better or worse programmers than someone who had college professors show them how to do everything? Hiring only college grads will give you a lot of programmers who can't think and learn on their own, and are not willing to try new things. And think for a while about the technical questions you are going to ask. I have heard some VERY stupid questions lately in interviews, and those programmers will resent your stupidity the entire time they work at your company.
Therefore, since the source code is free there must be other costs that are preventing most people from using Linux.
Actually, since there exists the thing called a Microsoft Tax, and since Microsoft makes software which is generally slightly easier to use, and since people are used to running Windows, and a few other reasons, people are still running Windows.
The Palladium scheme can never work. This is another classic case of FUD from microsoft. The reason this will never work is that as soon as someone makes a chip that won't work with Linux or any other non-MS Operating System, everyone who buys this chip as a Linux box will have to return it to the store for something that "works" with Linux. Maybe then we'll switch to the PowerPC chip instead. Who knows. Motorola will make a killing in the chip market, and Intel and AMD will have to rethink their chip design.
I tend to agree with this point somewhat. The benevolent dictatorship model has proven to be by far the most efficient model for open source programming (Linux kernel). Ideally the world would work in a similar way: one ultimate being dictates what should happen (and its good) and people do it (and the result is good).
"Well, that sounds too much like a dictatorship, Anakin."
You're reading drama into a situation that has none. Promote your favorite distros as much as you want, but don't do so at the unnecessary expense of others, especially when those others are putting forth an honest effort to help Linux.
Don't give the impression that UnitedLinux is a bad thing. All Linux companies are Open Source (except for Lindows, which is either going to 1. die suddenly of a court case or 2. will move to BSD and thereby shoot themselves in the foot), therefore, when anyone, including UnitedLinux, creates a Standard, it is always a good thing. Nothing is stopping anyone else from adopting this standard. More standards = easier to use software (unless of course, the standards are no good. but we will assume for now that they are good.)
...and the truth gets blurred like a wet letter, but since I gave up hope I feel a lot better...
Who necessarily hates M$? People just like to use a good operating system which doesn't (enter your own personal reasons here). Bundling good free software makes it that much faster and easier to get your new operating system install up to speed and ready to get some work done. Some OSS purists aren't using Mandrake anyways, they're using Debian, Slackware, and other pure free-software distros.
I've got 40 strong reasons why Linux will have a powerful desktop presence in the near future and Microsoft is running scared,
---Care to list them?
I think he was hoping that you would guess what they were (they're not too hard to figure out, right?). Teach a man how to chew gum, he'll chew for a day. Teach a man how to scrape gum off things, he'll chew for a lifetime - anonymous.
After the second time ANY program has made me wait 10+ seconds to use it, no matter how invaluable and ingenious that program was, it was immediately going into the trash! It didn't matter if, on a multi-threaded OS, I could switch over and use another app instead of waiting. It's the software companies' privilege that users would even bother with their software. If they take advantage of it, they can kiss their company good bye.
I do not promote or condone what Michael Robertson has done in any way, shape or form.
Please, in that case, stop defending him in this bizarre and ill-considered way.
Since when was I defending Michael Robertson? Unfortunately, this discussion has degenerated into some useless motive-defining and lost what I was originally saying. You're trying to "convince" me of something which I already know and understand. And you still fail to miss the point. The point is, that when a business decides to try an Open Source model, the FSF needs to be careful in how they deal with that company, because the rest of the business world is watching. They may win a battle, but lose the war. The FSF needs to find out the real reason why Michael Robertson is insecure about releasing the code, IMHO, before airing their dirty laundry in public. Do you want the FSF to look like a big bully? Will this help Microsoft's argument about Open Source being disruptive? It certainly will. I think you're too busy looking at the fine print to see the big picture here. And stop making assumptions about my reasons for posting. I'm not trying to get Lindows off the hook, I'm trying to make a point about the public image of the FSF, and about the GPL remaining attractive to businesses.
No Stormie, I am trying to get across the other much more important PRINCIPLE, not the one single worst-case scenario you are imagining. I am looking at a compromise here, one which you seem to have missed. A compromise based on software release policy.
True, it is not a good idea to allow companies to hold on to source code. At the same time, you cannot build a sound business when people are getting first impressions of your software based on it's junky alpha quality. They'll drop your software like an old habit. First impression is everything. How many people have good impressions of WINE? 'nuff said.
How many companies release software to the public in the alpha stages and survive to tell about it? Those exceptions that have survived a public alpha release have released software that is extremely stable and would really qualify as Beta or Golden Master Candidate software (although this is always a changing definition). By asking companies to release their source code early, it is asking them to compromise their software process. I do not promote or condone what Michael Robertson has done in any way, shape or form. And pardon me for looking out for the future of Linux, but IMHO the future of Linux is much bigger if companies are allowed to adhere to standard software release policies. Hackers don't mind putting up with buggy half-done software, that's what they live by, they created it. But the rest of the world doesn't like terrible software quality. And I will note, as much as I love Linux, I've seen more bugs with it than in your average teamtrack database, just with performing some minor tasks. This is not going to help Linux in the desktop market.
Another thing: the GPL provides for Michael Robertson to use it the way he is, therefore he is not a thief. There is no stated period of time in which he is obliged to release his code written in the GPL. Perhaps one should be added, because I think there is a misconception here. There should be an amendment made to the GPL to prevent this from happening in the future.
There are a lot of things which need to be explained about Linux to someone who is only vaguely familiar with it. Rather than going into an extremely technical discussion about the command line, compiling the kernel, etc. You should start the first day with explaining some of the paradigms of Linux. That:
1. The command line is THE all-encompassing tool which you live by on Linux. This is a tough paradigm to understand at first (you mean, I install files with the command line and not with the GUI? You mean, I can get help first from the man pages on the command line? You mean, I read files from the command line? Oh, I fix the system via the command line? etc.)
2. The decentralization of Linux - i.e. there is no single person/company in control of Linux (not Linus, not Red Hat, not IBM, etc.) and how this means that GNU/Linux,and the command line are here to stay (because beyond being replaced by a better version of Linux, there is no way to remove Linux, unlike Microsoft, which, if for whatever reason goes out of business, will cease to exist, because they will never Open Source their OS. Linux will always live on because any developer anywhere in the world can take over maintenance of it.) This is the heart of Free Software.
3. That Linux is free to change. While I as a developer cannot step in and create my own version of Windows, I can, even at this moment, create my own version of Linux (distro) any way in which I like it, and make a nice addition to what Linux currently offers the community.
I could go on, but those are the fundamentals. Of course, this is the general idea of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", with my own twist on it.
The second day, in addition to the fundamentals others have posted, it is important to go over Gnome and KDE. Very important. It is difficult to go from using a GUI 24/7 to a command line 24/7, and KDE/GNOME ease the pain tremendously.
Happy teaching!
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I did the math, and in 2880, it's not going to hit the east coast. It's going to smack straight into Uranus.
Now I can buy my favorite music for $5 instead of $17, since I really only like five or so songs on each cd. On some poor cd's, I only like one or two songs. Now the pressure is on musicians to make not just 10 decent songs on a cd, but 10 hits on a cd. Singles may become even more popular now. And for the record, Apple is hiring a Windows engineer to port it to Windows. What I really want is iTunes running on Linux. That would rock! The second best new feature of iTunes is the rendesvous enabled music serving. I can have one set of music on one Mac, and play on my other three Macs (with much smaller hard drives, I might add). But the one Mac has an 80GB hard drive and can store my whole collection. Pretty sweet.
I find this very funny: quoted from the firebirdsql letter on MozillaZine, "A browser is very much like a database". Wow, that's definitely what I was thinking too. Come to think of it, a database is also a lot like a car. They have been infringing on the Pontiac FireBird all this time! Call the lawyers!
Yeah, I can see it now. Buy the Sony Spiderman laptop. It's a super lightweight laptop with a special built-in spider sense which reacts beforehand when it sees Windows is about to crash. If anyone tries to steal it, it covers them in spiderwebs. It even suspends itself from the ceiling for convenient usage in places with no desks.
"Ah, look at the size of they boy's heed! It's huge! It's like sputnik! Well I'm not kiddin', that's a huge noggin! It's like an orange stuck on a toothpeck! It's a virtual planetoid! A bit spherical, but pointy in parts. Ahh, that was a bit over the line, wasn't et? He's gonna cry himself to sleep on 'es huge pilla!"
Ambrosia created a slew of the best shareware games ever seen for Mac, starting in 1992. They proved that shareware could actually be profitable. The quality of these games puts some commercial games to shame - it's on par with Nintendo's bug-free quality. The one that made them famous, Maelstrom, was ported to Linux. Ambrosia's games have historically been highly, highly addictive, especially Escape Velocity and it's sequels. I have to wonder, though, how well received they will be in the PC market which has an order of magnitude more games than the Mac.
That makes you a Minnovite! (Jonah Veggie Tales movie joke). Fishmonger! I'm just posting this for the halibut.
I have a friend who created a fairing for his motorcycle which allowed him to get 250 miles per gallon. I think it got 80 before he did that, but anyways, I would much rather go for one of those since you don't have to keep stopping at the gas station, and you can go faster with it. Also, the recumbent bicycles with fairings can go wicked fast with just a little effort and don't have the troubles of an engine either (it's easy to push 30 MPH on one of those).
Microsoft pulls a fast one on China.
Overheard in the Chinese consulate earlier this morning...
"Hmm.. Ok, install the source code from cd. ActiveX.cp, KernelDLL source.. Hey, wait a minute! I recognize this source code! This isn't the Windows source, it's Linux!"
But seriously, what's to prevent someone from taking the Windows source code and porting it to their own Linux distro? I think Microsoft just put another nail in their grave.
Like, oh my gawd, me and Steve Jobs were hanging out at the Jaguar release party at the Palo Alto Apple store last week, and I said, "Like, Steve, are you, like, going to make Jaguar run on PC's? Like, gag me with a spoon!" and Steve said, "Well, you know how it is man. I was just looking at those PC's, I started to trip out, and I said, man, those PC's are so much faster. I was just trippin' out and stuff."
Apple doesn't have any app vendors. They've all flown ship. That's why there are so many unemployed Mac programmers in silicon valley, and also why Apple is providing such a large free software bundle with Mac OS X.
The problem with hiring a good programmer is you don't know how good they are until they've been working for you for around six months. Then the real problems come in when they act like they're working but don't put anything out. No amount of interviewing is going to help you there - you should contract these people for one month at a time with the understanding that you will renew the contract if they perform well. If their performance starts to really slack off after a few months, then you know they're burnouts. You'll also know if you want them around after any other problems. Motivation is the key factor in development. I can name off many many programmers who know a lot but don't like to work. Looking for a college degree doesn't help either. If someone can program insanely well without anyone showing them how, would you think they were better or worse programmers than someone who had college professors show them how to do everything? Hiring only college grads will give you a lot of programmers who can't think and learn on their own, and are not willing to try new things. And think for a while about the technical questions you are going to ask. I have heard some VERY stupid questions lately in interviews, and those programmers will resent your stupidity the entire time they work at your company.
Therefore, since the source code is free there must be other costs that are preventing most people from using Linux.
Actually, since there exists the thing called a Microsoft Tax, and since Microsoft makes software which is generally slightly easier to use, and since people are used to running Windows, and a few other reasons, people are still running Windows.
The Palladium scheme can never work. This is another classic case of FUD from microsoft. The reason this will never work is that as soon as someone makes a chip that won't work with Linux or any other non-MS Operating System, everyone who buys this chip as a Linux box will have to return it to the store for something that "works" with Linux. Maybe then we'll switch to the PowerPC chip instead. Who knows. Motorola will make a killing in the chip market, and Intel and AMD will have to rethink their chip design.
Perhaps they should have called this a LOSABILITY study.
I tend to agree with this point somewhat. The benevolent dictatorship model has proven to be by far the most efficient model for open source programming (Linux kernel). Ideally the world would work in a similar way: one ultimate being dictates what should happen (and its good) and people do it (and the result is good).
"Well, that sounds too much like a dictatorship, Anakin."
To quote erat:
You're reading drama into a situation that has none. Promote your favorite distros as much as you want, but don't do so at the unnecessary expense of others, especially when those others are putting forth an honest effort to help Linux.
Don't give the impression that UnitedLinux is a bad thing. All Linux companies are Open Source (except for Lindows, which is either going to 1. die suddenly of a court case or 2. will move to BSD and thereby shoot themselves in the foot), therefore, when anyone, including UnitedLinux, creates a Standard, it is always a good thing. Nothing is stopping anyone else from adopting this standard. More standards = easier to use software (unless of course, the standards are no good. but we will assume for now that they are good.)
Who necessarily hates M$? People just like to use a good operating system which doesn't (enter your own personal reasons here). Bundling good free software makes it that much faster and easier to get your new operating system install up to speed and ready to get some work done. Some OSS purists aren't using Mandrake anyways, they're using Debian, Slackware, and other pure free-software distros.
I've got 40 strong reasons why Linux will have a powerful desktop presence in the near future and Microsoft is running scared, ---Care to list them?
I think he was hoping that you would guess what they were (they're not too hard to figure out, right?). Teach a man how to chew gum, he'll chew for a day. Teach a man how to scrape gum off things, he'll chew for a lifetime - anonymous.
No, it's because they don't have a working business-plan, just like most other Linux companies out there.
I hate to break the news to you, but a business plan comes from the vision of the leader.
After the second time ANY program has made me wait 10+ seconds to use it, no matter how invaluable and ingenious that program was, it was immediately going into the trash! It didn't matter if, on a multi-threaded OS, I could switch over and use another app instead of waiting. It's the software companies' privilege that users would even bother with their software. If they take advantage of it, they can kiss their company good bye.
I do not promote or condone what Michael Robertson has done in any way, shape or form.
Please, in that case, stop defending him in this bizarre and ill-considered way.
Since when was I defending Michael Robertson? Unfortunately, this discussion has degenerated into some useless motive-defining and lost what I was originally saying. You're trying to "convince" me of something which I already know and understand. And you still fail to miss the point. The point is, that when a business decides to try an Open Source model, the FSF needs to be careful in how they deal with that company, because the rest of the business world is watching. They may win a battle, but lose the war. The FSF needs to find out the real reason why Michael Robertson is insecure about releasing the code, IMHO, before airing their dirty laundry in public. Do you want the FSF to look like a big bully? Will this help Microsoft's argument about Open Source being disruptive? It certainly will. I think you're too busy looking at the fine print to see the big picture here. And stop making assumptions about my reasons for posting. I'm not trying to get Lindows off the hook, I'm trying to make a point about the public image of the FSF, and about the GPL remaining attractive to businesses.
No Stormie, I am trying to get across the other much more important PRINCIPLE, not the one single worst-case scenario you are imagining. I am looking at a compromise here, one which you seem to have missed. A compromise based on software release policy. True, it is not a good idea to allow companies to hold on to source code. At the same time, you cannot build a sound business when people are getting first impressions of your software based on it's junky alpha quality. They'll drop your software like an old habit. First impression is everything. How many people have good impressions of WINE? 'nuff said. How many companies release software to the public in the alpha stages and survive to tell about it? Those exceptions that have survived a public alpha release have released software that is extremely stable and would really qualify as Beta or Golden Master Candidate software (although this is always a changing definition). By asking companies to release their source code early, it is asking them to compromise their software process. I do not promote or condone what Michael Robertson has done in any way, shape or form. And pardon me for looking out for the future of Linux, but IMHO the future of Linux is much bigger if companies are allowed to adhere to standard software release policies. Hackers don't mind putting up with buggy half-done software, that's what they live by, they created it. But the rest of the world doesn't like terrible software quality. And I will note, as much as I love Linux, I've seen more bugs with it than in your average teamtrack database, just with performing some minor tasks. This is not going to help Linux in the desktop market. Another thing: the GPL provides for Michael Robertson to use it the way he is, therefore he is not a thief. There is no stated period of time in which he is obliged to release his code written in the GPL. Perhaps one should be added, because I think there is a misconception here. There should be an amendment made to the GPL to prevent this from happening in the future.
There are a lot of things which need to be explained about Linux to someone who is only vaguely familiar with it. Rather than going into an extremely technical discussion about the command line, compiling the kernel, etc. You should start the first day with explaining some of the paradigms of Linux. That: 1. The command line is THE all-encompassing tool which you live by on Linux. This is a tough paradigm to understand at first (you mean, I install files with the command line and not with the GUI? You mean, I can get help first from the man pages on the command line? You mean, I read files from the command line? Oh, I fix the system via the command line? etc.) 2. The decentralization of Linux - i.e. there is no single person/company in control of Linux (not Linus, not Red Hat, not IBM, etc.) and how this means that GNU/Linux,and the command line are here to stay (because beyond being replaced by a better version of Linux, there is no way to remove Linux, unlike Microsoft, which, if for whatever reason goes out of business, will cease to exist, because they will never Open Source their OS. Linux will always live on because any developer anywhere in the world can take over maintenance of it.) This is the heart of Free Software. 3. That Linux is free to change. While I as a developer cannot step in and create my own version of Windows, I can, even at this moment, create my own version of Linux (distro) any way in which I like it, and make a nice addition to what Linux currently offers the community. I could go on, but those are the fundamentals. Of course, this is the general idea of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", with my own twist on it. The second day, in addition to the fundamentals others have posted, it is important to go over Gnome and KDE. Very important. It is difficult to go from using a GUI 24/7 to a command line 24/7, and KDE/GNOME ease the pain tremendously. Happy teaching!
Just have them log in as root, and type rm *.* I guarantee they will feel the POWER of Linux! And maybe never log in as root again!