The fact that Macs now have a lot more market share is one reason Apple are doing this now. Oracle cannot ignore or neglect the Mac market any more.
A lot of comments here seem to agree or disagree with things they think Gosling said, because they only read the Slashdot summary or the article from The Register that quoted from Gosling's blog, rather than both to click through and read what he has to say: in particular he does not say whether Oracle will supply Java for Mac. The implication seems to be its not a big deal for them to do so in principal, as it was being discussed anyway, but there are serious problems such as Apple's secret APIs.
The Register article also quotes Simon Phipps who is lot more negative about it and points out some other potential problem.
True. I had to click some extra buttons to edit a config file on Vista. It was damn difficult to figure what to do though - how one edits a file as admin was far from obvious (no equivalent to "edit as root" in a Linux file manager).
Of course, on Mandriva I could change the same config (the hosts file) in a GUI so I would not need to edit as root anyway.
I was also amused to find that Windows copies Unix files structure in having a partial equivalent to/etc (though its buried several layers deep) called \etc nin which the hosts file sits.
Do they need to know, what is a kernel, what is X and such? No, I do not think so.
Do Linux users need to know what a kernel is etc.? My wife does not, nor my father. My wife does have me around to help, but she asks for less help than she did with Windows (fewer phone calls from my father too).
That may apply to sysadmins whose main skill is knowing how to use the software. I doubt it applies to non-IT jobs. I really doubt that the average office worker could raise their earnings by learning Open Office, so it follows that they would not cost employers any more.
Also, in comparing Windows and Unix admins, are you comparing people of equal skill, doing jobs of equal responsibility? Are your students really as good as your Unix admins? Are they as productive? Can they ensure the same level of security and reliability? Are the Windows and Unix server equally important? Why can you not recruit LAMP admins from among the students?
I do not see how that would work in any tax system I have come across. You can offset actual costs against profits, but you cannot deduct a foregone profit.
If they gave them free CDs they could deduct the cost of printing CDs. If they pay a license fee to another MS subsidiary to cover this they might be able to deduct that cost from their taxes, but that will be less than retail cost, and overdoing it would make the tax authorities suspicious (and a good many countries have measures to control the use of transfer pricing for tax avoidance.).
Crime statistics? The vast majority of software piracy in those countries is probably not a criminal offence.
How on earth do they get a number "number of units of software installed"? How do they count units pirated? Do they count free software? Is each RPM on my PC a "unit"?
Living in a country on that list that is on that list with a 90% rate, the only things people pay for here are pre-installed copies of Windows on big brand PCs (e.g. HP, Dell etc.), a few things from vendors that threaten to sue if they find pirated versions (e.g. commerical use of Photoshop or Lotus Notes), and stuff that you cannot risk not having support for (e.g. banking software).
Well if Linux is going to challenge MS for the SME business, some MS style marketing (which is exactly what this survey is) is likely to succeed.
The other thing about looking at big companies, is that saying "this is what big companies do" is a great way to sell to SMEs. This may not be so true in technology businesses where start-ups have glamour, but it is true in most other sectors.
The other part is that open standards (and open source) have significant advantages: no vendor lock-in, archived material remains accessible (even if you have to write a converter to a newer format - which may well be worth it for government archives), competition between vendors means lower prices (free markets always work better for the buyer), etc.
As most of the code was written by employees of companies Oracle bought, Oracle does own the copyrights. They also own the trademarks.
Of course its a conflict of interests. They are working on a competing product. Its like a Windows developer contributing to WINE.
I also cannot find any clear explanation of why the fork is necessary. This is very different from XFree86 where there was a clear problem. I would have thought that Oracle has both the resources and the will to rival MS Office.
With 10 million readers he would only need ad revenues of £2 per thousand readers to make the same revenues. If each reader views a few pages, it would take very low ad CPM rates.
That is keeping your assumption that all current readers are paying the full rate: that ignores both print subscribers and people on the £1 for the first month trial rate.
Just being able to get the source does not meet the usual definition of open source - otherwise every bit of software that has a source license available is "open source".
Open source has some intrinsic business and financial advantages:
1) Avoiding vendor lock-in. IF you treat this as option value it is worth a lot. 2) The likelihood of forks mitigates risk - if the original developer of popular FOSS software fails to continue development, or goes the wrong way (e.g. neglecting security), or goes bankrupt, then it is very likely that forks will spring up. There are real life examples of all of these. 3) The ability to change code yourself (if you do not have the skills in-house, to hire someone to do it for you). 4) The ability to audit the code for security or quality (usually does not matter, but may do sometimes).
It's about philosophy. One of the unwritten qualifications for the upper echelons of corporate management is believing wholeheartedly that capitalist corporations are the most efficient way of producing the highest quality goods and services
In what way is Oracle not a a capitalist corporation? If you are talking about open source in general Red hat, IBM, Google etc. seem to be capitalist corporations as well.
He had a friend who thinks that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated. Someone who thinks that the terrorism is not a real threat must be against the war on terror therefore they must be a terrorist sympathiser.
Being a friend of a terrorist sympathiser and having a foreign father is sufficient reason to investigate someone.
If they did not investigate people like this there would be hardly anyone left to investigate.
1) Very few people understand statistics. 2) Very few people really even try to be rational about risk 3) Riding the wave of panic sells the media
After the London tube and bus bombings some people took to going to work by motorbike. After train accidents some people took to driving. After the 9/11 attacks more people died as a result of the increase in use of road transport (as people were frightened of flying) than died in the actual attacks.
Its fine laughing at foreigners (especially Americans) for getting things wrong that the British can get right: how to pronounce Cholmondley or Kirkcudbright (or even Edinburgh).
The problem with "what is Big Ben?" is that the British usually get it wrong as well.
protecting pedophiles in the name of sparing the Church a tarnished name
But you seem to have no problem with, for example, the British government failing to take action over sexual abuse by social workers?
In fact no-one seems to. The leader of Islington council who sent children back into the care of people they had accused of abusing them (and told them they were too mentally unstable to be believed), was later made "minister for children". At least the bishops who covered up abuse tried to separate the abused from the abuser, and were made to resign once it because public.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that Macs now have a lot more market share is one reason Apple are doing this now. Oracle cannot ignore or neglect the Mac market any more.
A lot of comments here seem to agree or disagree with things they think Gosling said, because they only read the Slashdot summary or the article from The Register that quoted from Gosling's blog, rather than both to click through and read what he has to say: in particular he does not say whether Oracle will supply Java for Mac. The implication seems to be its not a big deal for them to do so in principal, as it was being discussed anyway, but there are serious problems such as Apple's secret APIs.
The Register article also quotes Simon Phipps who is lot more negative about it and points out some other potential problem.
or them, the idea of Easily Installing/Deinstalling software with just one or two mouse clicks is a compelling idea.
So why are they not using Linux?
Linux allows anyone to run their own repo.
If I can set up an alternative or supplementary Mac App store that any user would be able to add to their Mac, then your comparison is valid.
Why not? It works (on most distros), and its hardly performance critical.
True. I had to click some extra buttons to edit a config file on Vista. It was damn difficult to figure what to do though - how one edits a file as admin was far from obvious (no equivalent to "edit as root" in a Linux file manager).
Of course, on Mandriva I could change the same config (the hosts file) in a GUI so I would not need to edit as root anyway.
I was also amused to find that Windows copies Unix files structure in having a partial equivalent to /etc (though its buried several layers deep) called \etc nin which the hosts file sits.
Do they need to know, what is a kernel, what is X and such? No, I do not think so.
Do Linux users need to know what a kernel is etc.? My wife does not, nor my father. My wife does have me around to help, but she asks for less help than she did with Windows (fewer phone calls from my father too).
That may apply to sysadmins whose main skill is knowing how to use the software. I doubt it applies to non-IT jobs. I really doubt that the average office worker could raise their earnings by learning Open Office, so it follows that they would not cost employers any more.
Also, in comparing Windows and Unix admins, are you comparing people of equal skill, doing jobs of equal responsibility? Are your students really as good as your Unix admins? Are they as productive? Can they ensure the same level of security and reliability? Are the Windows and Unix server equally important? Why can you not recruit LAMP admins from among the students?
I do not see how that would work in any tax system I have come across. You can offset actual costs against profits, but you cannot deduct a foregone profit.
If they gave them free CDs they could deduct the cost of printing CDs. If they pay a license fee to another MS subsidiary to cover this they might be able to deduct that cost from their taxes, but that will be less than retail cost, and overdoing it would make the tax authorities suspicious (and a good many countries have measures to control the use of transfer pricing for tax avoidance.).
Crime statistics? The vast majority of software piracy in those countries is probably not a criminal offence.
How on earth do they get a number "number of units of software installed"? How do they count units pirated? Do they count free software? Is each RPM on my PC a "unit"?
Living in a country on that list that is on that list with a 90% rate, the only things people pay for here are pre-installed copies of Windows on big brand PCs (e.g. HP, Dell etc.), a few things from vendors that threaten to sue if they find pirated versions (e.g. commerical use of Photoshop or Lotus Notes), and stuff that you cannot risk not having support for (e.g. banking software).
Well if Linux is going to challenge MS for the SME business, some MS style marketing (which is exactly what this survey is) is likely to succeed.
The other thing about looking at big companies, is that saying "this is what big companies do" is a great way to sell to SMEs. This may not be so true in technology businesses where start-ups have glamour, but it is true in most other sectors.
That's part of the answer.
The other part is that open standards (and open source) have significant advantages: no vendor lock-in, archived material remains accessible (even if you have to write a converter to a newer format - which may well be worth it for government archives), competition between vendors means lower prices (free markets always work better for the buyer), etc.
with Sun being bought by Oracle the other contributors expect the situation to get worse
As most of the code was written by employees of companies Oracle bought, Oracle does own the copyrights. They also own the trademarks.
Of course its a conflict of interests. They are working on a competing product. Its like a Windows developer contributing to WINE.
I also cannot find any clear explanation of why the fork is necessary. This is very different from XFree86 where there was a clear problem. I would have thought that Oracle has both the resources and the will to rival MS Office.
With 10 million readers he would only need ad revenues of £2 per thousand readers to make the same revenues. If each reader views a few pages, it would take very low ad CPM rates.
That is keeping your assumption that all current readers are paying the full rate: that ignores both print subscribers and people on the £1 for the first month trial rate.
Both the EU and the US claim to favour free market capitalism.
In practice they both prefer mercantilism ("corporate welfare")
Just being able to get the source does not meet the usual definition of open source - otherwise every bit of software that has a source license available is "open source".
Open source has some intrinsic business and financial advantages:
1) Avoiding vendor lock-in. IF you treat this as option value it is worth a lot.
2) The likelihood of forks mitigates risk - if the original developer of popular FOSS software fails to continue development, or goes the wrong way (e.g. neglecting security), or goes bankrupt, then it is very likely that forks will spring up. There are real life examples of all of these.
3) The ability to change code yourself (if you do not have the skills in-house, to hire someone to do it for you).
4) The ability to audit the code for security or quality (usually does not matter, but may do sometimes).
It's about philosophy. One of the unwritten qualifications for the upper echelons of corporate management is believing wholeheartedly that capitalist corporations are the most efficient way of producing the highest quality goods and services
In what way is Oracle not a a capitalist corporation? If you are talking about open source in general Red hat, IBM, Google etc. seem to be capitalist corporations as well.
what the hell is "European Russia"
The portion of the Russian Federation that is in Europe, as opposed to most of its land area which is in Asia.
He had a friend who thinks that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated. Someone who thinks that the terrorism is not a real threat must be against the war on terror therefore they must be a terrorist sympathiser.
Being a friend of a terrorist sympathiser and having a foreign father is sufficient reason to investigate someone.
If they did not investigate people like this there would be hardly anyone left to investigate.
Several reasons.
1) Very few people understand statistics.
2) Very few people really even try to be rational about risk
3) Riding the wave of panic sells the media
After the London tube and bus bombings some people took to going to work by motorbike. After train accidents some people took to driving. After the 9/11 attacks more people died as a result of the increase in use of road transport (as people were frightened of flying) than died in the actual attacks.
Many audiophiles also swear by tubes, for dynamic range and warmth.
You mean the sort of people who buy these: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/06/snake-oil-alert/ ?
Its fine laughing at foreigners (especially Americans) for getting things wrong that the British can get right: how to pronounce Cholmondley or Kirkcudbright (or even Edinburgh).
The problem with "what is Big Ben?" is that the British usually get it wrong as well.
Traffic shaping is fine provided its unbiased (i.e. network neutral, but not protocol neutral), and you tell customers you are doing it.
protecting pedophiles in the name of sparing the Church a tarnished name
But you seem to have no problem with, for example, the British government failing to take action over sexual abuse by social workers?
In fact no-one seems to. The leader of Islington council who sent children back into the care of people they had accused of abusing them (and told them they were too mentally unstable to be believed), was later made "minister for children". At least the bishops who covered up abuse tried to separate the abused from the abuser, and were made to resign once it because public.